WHO IS BEHIND COMMON CORE

Common Core standards, a federally promoted education initiative introduced in the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus bill through a competitive grant program called Race to the Top (RTTT). States could apply and compete for federal grant money as long as they adopted the Common Core, a set of uniform standards, aligned curricula, and assessments that allows for a greater role of government in education, higher levels of social indoctrination, student data collection, and teacher evaluations based on student performance on the assessments.

The National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and nonprofit progressive education think tank Achieve, Inc. were mainly responsible for the initiative, and both the NGA and the CCSSO are the publishers of the Common Core State Standards.

The state boards of education, most of them unelected, that signed onto the unproven Common Core standards did so with little, if any, public or media scrutiny prior to even seeing the standards themselves.

The implementation of Common Core has been privately funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, underscoring the alliance of big government political elites and corporatists in this academic initiative.

A nonprofit organization called Achieve, Inc., in Washington, D.C. is the main driving force behind creating the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI). The Common Core (CC) standards were initiated by private interests in Washington, D.C., without any representation from the states.See Common Core: Myths vs. Facts here written by American Principles Project.

From the Achieve, Inc. website: "To this day, Achieve remains the only education reform organization led by a Board of Directors of governors and business leaders. This unique perspective has enabled Achieve to set a bold and visionary agenda over the past 15 years, leading Education Week in 2006 to rank Achieve as one of the most influential education policy organizations in the nation."

"Eventually the creators of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) realized the need to present a facade of state involvement, and therefore, enlisted the National Governors Association (NGA) {a trade association that doesn't include all governors}, and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), another DC-based trade association. Neither of these groups have grant authority from any particular state or states to write the standards. The bulk of the creative work was done by Achieve, Inc., a DC-based nonprofit that includes many progressive education reformers who have been advocating national standards and curriculum for decades. Massive funding for all this came from private interests such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." (See Common Core: Myths vs. Facts as well for further information).

For a quick visual overview on how the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) {actually Federal Standards} view this flowchart: How is it implemented in our "States"?below:

Achieve, Inc., states in their Common Core Implementation Workbook, "After 30 years of fits and starts, true transformational reform in education is not only possible but also entirely within our grasp. In the last few years, we have seen a number of significant shifts occur: College and career readiness for all students is the new national norm, the majority of states have adopted internationally benchmarked K through 12 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English, and most states are participating in a Race to the Top assessment consortium. The nation has, by and large, coalesced around a common, and rigorous, set of expectations and goals that will put all students on a trajectory to graduate from high school ready for college, careers and citizenship."

"The implementation challenge looms large. In response,Achieve and the U.S. Education Delivery Institute have developed a practical Common Core Implementation Workbook for all states in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). The workbook uses a proven performance management methodology known as 'delivery' to lay out clear action steps for states and districts. It provides relevant information, case stories of good practice, key questions and hands-on exercises for leadership teams to complete together. Regardless of your timeline, the workbook offers state and district leaders the means to plan for the CCSS and then drive successful implementation. The discipline of delivery was first developed in 2001 under U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. This approach to public sector management is widely credited with helping Blair's government meet most of its policy targets for a range of public services." So as you can see, the delivery system for Common Core started in 2001, long before what is stated on the CCSSI website of 2009-2010!

WHAT COMPANIES HAVE TO GAIN FROM COMMON CORE?

You can see from the "How is it Implemented in our 'States'?" flowchart, there are companies that will directly benefit by implementing Common Core. Some of these companies are:

 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, pledged $60 billion dollars in Grants in 2007. Bill and Melinda Gates are directly tied to the United Nations, and they will directly benefit from the software packages that are sold to train teachers in the classroom through Microsoft.

 Publishing Companies- Pearson, Scholastic News,MacGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, (AZ textbooks used in Public Schools are primarily from the publisher Harcourt) etc., will benefit from Common Core because they willprovide the textbooks, for training teachers and teaching students, and curriculum changes that will need to be made to implement Common Core. Pearson, the largest on-line book company in the world, announced in their 2012 Earnings Report that "The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)...awarded Pearson and Educational Testing Service (ETS) the contract to develop test items that will be part of the new English and Mathematics assessments to be administered from the 2014-2015 school year. We continued to produce strong growth in secure online testing, an important market for the future. We increased online testing volumes by more than 10%, delivering 6.5 million state accountability tests, 4.5 million constructed response items and 21 million spoken tests. We now assess oral proficiency in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Arabic and Chinese. We also launched the Online Assessment Readiness Tool for the PARCC and the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Common Core consortia to help 45 states prepare for the transition to online assessments."Can you say more $$$ for Pearson???

 Achieve, Inc. connections- who will benefit from Common Core? Craig Barrett is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Achieve, Inc., he is the current Chairman for the AZ Ready Education Council; and he is a Thunderbird Faculty memberpromoting United Nation Principles. (He is also the Former CEO/Chairman of the Board of Intel). Computer companies will directly benefit from computer sales to the states and local school districts. All of the Common Core student assessment testing will now be computer based. See (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers {PARCC} website for more details on the new student testing that will replace AIMS).

http://arizonansagainstcommoncore.com/Who_Behind_CC.html