More Lipstick for the Pig - Don't Accept the Lies!

Despite the fact that we have three more co-sponsors for HB 25 by Rep. Debbie Mayfield to pause Common Core, the legislative leadership, the Department of Education, the State Board of Education, the political people working for the governor, and the other proponents of Common Core are lying to you!

Here are the lies being perpetrated on you, the parents and taxpayers of Florida followed by the truth and facts 
1)      LIE: The changes adopted by the state board, the name change and removing the references to Common Core from statute mean that we have Florida's standards now.  "Florida is on a different path."
 
TRUTH: Removing references in statute to Common Core to diffuse political toxicity may be the kind of tactic that worked in George Orwell's1984, but does not "change the path" Florida is traveling.  That "path" is leading our children, our teachers and academic excellence right over a cliff.  Changing the name from Common Core to Florida's Standards does nothing to make them Florida's standards, but just creates a "perception of deception" or as Representative Hood described, putting "lipstick on a pig"  (See our analysis and video of testimony by Randy Osborne, Catherine Baer and Meredith Mears here.) The 98 changes that the commissioner herself called "minor" and testified will not affect the tests or the instructional materials, that she and other officials stated during the hearing process would not be significant, that hundreds of people protested against at the February 18th hearing, and 77 out 0f 80 testified against at that same hearing do not take us out of Common Core.   Changing 0.8% of 11,000 standards does not make these standards "Florida's standards."
 
2)   LIE: Florida is out of the PARCC assessment and the assessment about to be chosen is unique to Florida and based on these new "Florida Standards."
 
 
TRUTH:  Apparently the spin doctors are ignorant or refusing to look at the abundant evidence that all five of the testing companies competing for the Florida contract are fully Common Core aligned.  The recent news stories by the East Orlando Post and WUSF show that the current leading candidate for the testing contract, AIR (American Institutes for Research), are developing the test for SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium), which is the other federally funded, federally supervised national testing consortium testing the national Common Core standards.  In addition, AIR bills itself as "one of the world's largest behavioral and social science research and evaluation organizations." This is more evidence that psychological teaching and testing is part of Common Core and the standards, by whatever name they are deceptively being labeled that are taught and tested in Florida, despite the concerns raised in the governor's executive order.
 
3) LIE:  The data protection bills going through the legislature will protect student data privacy while relying on the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
 
TRUTH: Again, information is being presented that is misinformed, ignorant, or knowingly deceptive. As we have documented since last year during the fight over SB 878, the infamous data mining bill, any "FERPA exceptions" render proposed data protections completely meaningless.  There is an entire section of the FERPA regulations titled "99.31 Under what conditions is prior consent not required to disclose information?" that is explained in detail in our response to the deceptive letter to Arne Duncan signed by 34 chief state school officers, including Pam Stewart, trying to give the impression that individual student data will not be given to the federal government, when both PARCC and SBAC clearly admit that it will be.  To be meaningful, any data protection bill must not be based on the non-existent protections in FERPA and must prohibit psychosocial teaching, testing and data collection.  

Please contact Governor Scott, your senator, and your representative to let them know that you will not tolerate this.  Demand that they pull Florida out of the Common Core national standards, tests, and data collection system! Governor Scott has the power to remove Florida from Common Core by taking us out of the memorandum of understanding that Charlie Crist signed putting us into Common Core.

Also please demand hearings for HB 25/SB 1316!  Here are the committee chairs with links to their contact information:
 
Rep. Marlene O'Toole - House K-12 Policy Committee
Rep. Erik Fresen - House Education Appropriations Subcommittee
Senator John Legg - Senate Education Committee
Senator Bill Galvano - Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittee

 

Comments

Post a comment (* required field)

Name *
Email * (will not be published)
Website
Comments *

Keep in Touch

Subscribe