White House ConnectED: Phase Out Printed Textbooks

Written by Christel Lane Swasey

I already had a sense of growing nausea attached to my observations of locals’ infatuation with technology-centric schooling.

It got worse when I read the latest White House fact sheet on Obama’s ConnectEd plan.  Utah’s perfectly in line with  D.C. –the cool people are dumping the old fashioned notion of using books in schools to spend gobs and gobs and gobbledy-gob-gobs on technology.

Both the left wing (Obama’s ConnectEd plan) and the right wing (Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now) plan to gobbledy-gob our tax dollars onCommon Core-aligned,  Common Data Standards-aligned technologies –always provided by the same little money-gobbling  clique.

Even embedded in the Common Core tests and curriculum is the trendy party line that books are out –because technology is in.

I’m not against technology.  I’m against foolishness.

Technology is a great, glittering servant. But it’s a terrible master.  Its imperfections can be disastrous.  But in Obama’s version of reality, it has no flaws and it deserves our full (tax dollar) attention.

In the White House fact sheet on President Obama’s ConnectED “Plan for Connecting all Schools to the Digital Age”  we read that traditional education, the kind that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were raised with, is to be discarded for solely technology-based education:

“Our schools were designed for a different era – based on a limited school day and a seasonal calendar. This system does not take into account the constant learning opportunities of global connectivity…”

(Recall that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been saying for many years that he wants students to attend school 6-7 days per week,  up to 14 hours per day, all year round. If you haven’t seen it before, watch that video clip here.)

ConnectED sounds appealing on the surface: upgraded connectivity, reaching out to rural students, exposing students and teachers to new technology.  It even appears, on first reading, that ConnectEd promotes local control: “purchasing choices remain in the hands of localeducational leaders,” it says.

But remember: when the Gates-owned “Microsoft and its hardware partners unveiled a range of devices at various price points to help U.S. public schools make the digital transition,”  it promised: “all of the devices are Common Core testing compliant“.  Is there any actual choice here?

Common Educational Data Standards (CEDS) is the unshakable shadow to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) –both of which which ConnectEd depends upon, and both CEDS and CCSS come from the same people:  The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) –a private, unelected, nontransparent club of superintendents, financially backed by Gates.

CEDS common data standards ensure that all state databases (aka SLDS) match one another, and that all student and teacher information is fully labeled and compare-able.  Thus, there is no room for true diversity among states/schools in this system; no true freedom of thought, no true competitive soaring, just sameness.  And because CEDS are used in every state’s longitudinal database, are interoperable with the federal EdFacts Data Exchange, and are no longer protected by federal privacy law, it means also: no guarantee of student data privacy.

Fact:  “A continued commitment to disaggregation” of student data is a central goal of the CCSSO Council.  These facts make national school interoperability and connectivity sound a lot less peachy.

Still, the Obama and Jeb Bush clique is pushing for a one-size-fits-all national, matching technology system.  We are not just to receive the good things touted, like upgraded connectivity and new technology for kids;  we are also getting shackled to the CEDS/NCES data collecting system and to the Common Core testing system, and to the corporate educational products that are aligned to these systems.

Additionally, under the misleading subheading “Restoring U.S. Leadership in Vital Areas” the ConnectEd fact sheet touts the end of using actual books in schools, as a good thing.

“The United States is now falling behind… In South Korea, all schools are connected to the internet with high-speed connections, all teachers are trained in digital learning, and printed textbooks will be phased out by 2016.”

Why the hurry?  Are people afraid that if they question the race to “phase out books,” they will be labeled “against progress” and out of touch?  Are we backwards if we raise an eyebrow at the mad rush toward every student being hooked up to the internet?  What are the unintended consequences and opportunity costs of phasing out books and tangible libraries to bring about the brave new unvetted vision of Bill Gates, Marc Tucker, Sir Michael Barber, Obama and Bush?

Studies show that reading a paper-and-ink book is a better, more lasting learning experience than reading electronically.   For sobering reasons, top Silicon Valley computer experts send their children to technology-free schools.  Education systems can suffer when so many eggs are placed in one basket– and the basket falls. When we become overly reliant on technology, when technology is hacked or when it breaks; when it’s philosophically hijacked by software designers employed by narrow minded politicians, or when it is aligned with consent-less data mining,  what then?

Remember the smell of a book and the feeling of paper.  Are books suddenly worthless because they are not speedy, networked and electronic? If we don’t invest philosophically and financially in books, soon there won’t be many around.   

Please wake up, American leaders and Utah leaders.  We can find solutions for increased technology, free from the Obama-Bush-Gates clique’s narrow vision.

Let’s hold on to real books, real libraries, and the time-tested culture of academic  freedom and student data privacy.  Let’s shake off the chains of  common data, common testing, and common data mining that will bind our children down.

See more at http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/white-house-connected-phase-out-printed-textbooks/

Comment by elkgrovecamom

Thank you! It’s just another example of bureaucrats mindlessly making political decisions without a care for the “unintended” consequences. I don’t think I believe any more that much of the consequences are unintentional at all!

One friendly criticism of your awesome article, Christel – progressives have worked hard to take over the language, forever changing the meaning of perfectly good words like, “rigor” and, well, “progressive,” so I think we need to make a conscious effort to choose our words very carefully. Most people these days believe that the people we elect to government are our “leaders” when they are absolutely not. They are the hired help to whom we have delegated our authority to represent us in our government. We hire a manager to help us run a business we own but we would never even consider treating them or allowing them to believe they have authority over us. If they’re not doing their job to our satisfaction, they must be replaced or we may lose our livelihood. We really need to call them what they are: representatives or delegates. Never, never “leader,” lest the tail will forever wag the dog.

CIVIL WAR ERUPTING AMONG DEMOCRATS OVER OBAMACARE

article by  WYNTON HALL

A civil war has opened up inside the Democratic Party over Obamacare. 

With half of all Senate Democrats who voted for Obamacare no longer in office, top Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and outgoing Tom Harkin (D-IA) have begun trashing Democrats' decision to embrace the deeply unpopular Obamacare program. Indeed, even progressive New York Times columnist Tom Edsall now concedes that Obamacare is partly to blame for working-class Americans' all-time low 27% approval rating of Democrats, which Edsall says has now nosedived to "dangerous levels."

"We blew it," said Harkin. "What we did is we muddled through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively." 

Harkin added, "I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all." 

Schumer agrees.

“Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them,” Schumer said two weeks ago. “We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem: health care reform.”

Schumer added, "We were in the middle of a recession, people were hurting and said, ‘What about me? I’m losing my job. It’s not health care that bothers me.’”

But now, progressives like Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-CA), andNew York Times columnist Paul Krugman are blasting Democrats who dare to speak ill of Obamacare, reports The Hill.

"I disagree with both of them," Waxman said about comments by fellow Democrats Schumer and Harkin. "I disagree with what they said, and I can't quite see a lot of value in it...I think the Democrats and Sen. Schumer ought to be proud of it." 

Hoyer agreed, stating that "millions of Americans" now benefit from Obamacare. After the White House's recent admission that it released inflated enrollment figures, the Obama administration now claims just 6.7 million people are enrolled in Obamacare, not the 8 million it previously claimed. Moreover, the administration will not say what portion of the 6.7 million are among the 5 million Americans whose plans were canceled by Obamacare which then in turn forced them enroll in Obamacare.

Times columnist Paul Krugman trashed Schumer's assessment as "deeply wrongheaded" in a Thursday piece titled, "Democrats Against Reform."

"If more Democrats had been willing to defend the best thing they've done in decades, rather than run away from their own achievement and implicitly concede that the smears against health reform were right, the politics of the issue might look very different today," wrote Krugman.

However, with embattled Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber set to testify on Tuesday about his shocking statements about "the stupidity of the American voter" and his contention that deception was essential to Obamacare's passage, it's unclear how an already unpopular law will turn public opinion around.

Indeed, after four years and eight months of being the law of the land, Obamacare hit a new all-time low approval rating in the Gallup poll of just 37%. For that reason, Democrats' internecine battle over Obamacare may continue to rage on for months and years to come.

see more at http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/07/Civil-War-Erupting-Among-Democrats-Over-Obamacare

Most Americans Believe Race Relations Have Worsened Under Him

Article by Dave Urbanski

While President Barack Obama declared that America has made “progress” over the years on reducing racism, a just-released poll indicates that most Americans believe race relations have deteriorated during Obama’s presidency.

Image source: BET

In an interview with BET, the president described his conversation with a group of young civil rights activists, including a leader of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, he hosted last week in the Oval Office.

“We can’t equate what is happening now to what was happening 50 years ago,” Obama said, “and if you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they’ll tell you that things are better, not good in some places, but better.”

“We have made progress,” he said, according to a preview of the interview with BET.

Still Obama noted that racism and bias “is something that is deeply rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history,” according to the preview. The full interview will be broadcast Monday.

Interestingly, a Bloomberg Politics poll published Sunday asked participants, “Do you think race relations have gotten better, gotten worse, or stayed about the same under the first black president?”

The result: 53 percent said race relations have gotten worse.

See more at http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/07/obama-says-america-has-made-progress-on-reducing-racism-poll-shows-most-americans-believe-race-relations-have-worsened-under-him/

Democrats Suffer Most Midterm Losses Ever Under Obama

by By Greg Richter

When Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her re-election runoff on Saturday it put Barack Obama in the record books as the two-term president with the most midterm losses for his party.

The record previously was held by Harry Truman.

Truman's Democratic Party lost 74 seats in 1946 and 1950, while under Obama the Democrats have lost a total of 75 seats in 2010 and 2014. He could lose one more if Republican Martha McSally beats Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona in an election recount, Breitbart News reports. McSally is currently ahead by only 200 votes.

Most presidents have one bad midterm and one that isn't as bad, writes Roll Call's Stu Rothenberg. 

George W. Bush actually gained seats in his first midterm, when the country was still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. And Bill Clinton gained seats in his second midterm after losing the House to Republicans four years earlier. But each suffered big losses in the other midterm during their presidencies.

Rothenberg said the partisanship of elections are partly to blame for Democratic losses, but so is Obama's failed leadership. Many in his base are believed to have stayed home because they didn't see Obama acting on things they care about, such as immigration reform.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Politics/midterm-loss-democrat-obama/2014/12/07/id/611617/#ixzz3LKIysFrk

U of California Event: “Bringing Down Israel Will Benefit Everyone in the World”

from an article by Daniel Greenfield  (This is scary)

A November 12 panel discussion on the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus was billed as an opportunity to learn about events 7,000 miles away in Israel – and about a Dec. 4 graduate student vote to join the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Instead, attendees were exhorted to bring down the Jewish State.

Hosted by UAW 2865, a union of over 13,000 student-workers across the University of California system, the union’s BDS Caucus brought in guest speakers to “discuss the role of organized labor in the Palestine solidarity movement.”

Panelist Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), dominated the conversation.

“Bringing down Israel will really benefit everyone in the world and everyone in society, particularly workers,” she said later.

See more at http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/university-of-california-event-bringing-down-israel-will-really-benefit-everyone-in-the-world/

Jason Riley On Ferguson: ‘The Issue Here Is Black Criminality, Not The Behavior Of Cops’

By AL WEAVER

In an appearance on “The Kelly File” Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley said he believes the real issue at hand, after no indictment was handed down in the death of Michael Brown, is black-on-black crime and not the cops involvement at large.

“The issue here is black criminality, not the behavior of cops,” Riley told Kelly, noting the homicide of African-Americans is too high, and the “leading cause of death for young black men.” Riley, who appeared with Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, also echoed Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s comments on “Meet the Press” Sunday, saying the main reason for deaths among African-Americans is “because other black people are shooting them.”

“Yeah, the left is selling a false narrative here. We have too many dead black bodies in this country. But cops are not the reason. The black homicide rate is much too high. It is the leading cause of death for young black men. But blacks also commit seven to 10 times more violent crime in this country than whites do, and 90 percent of their victims are other black people. We have so many dead black bodies in this country, Megyn, not because cops are shooting them, but because other black people are shooting them. And the left is selling a false narrative pretending that the opposite is true.

“The issue here is black criminality, not the behavior of cops. It’s the behavior of the young black men in these communities. Whenever a Ferguson goes down, we start talking about racial profiling, we start talking about poverty, we start talking about unemployment. We start talking about tensions between the cops and black people. Those are facts. Those are not causes. The cause here is black criminality. The fact that blacks who are 13 percent of the population, are responsible for an outsized amount of violent crime in this country. Until that ends, you are going to have racial profiling. You are going to have tensions between blacks and whites.

“It’s not about the police, it is not about the over-policing of black communities and young black men getting picked on by cops. Blacks are arrested at the same rate that victims of crimes identify blacks as their assailants. Cops are in these communities because that’s where the 9-1-1 calls originate. They’re originally there stopping blacks from harming one another. This is not about the cops.

“The left wants to use racism as an all-purpose explanation for what ails the black community. Certain situations fit that narrative, like Ferguson, certain situations do not, like Chicago.”

See more at
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/25/jason-riley-on-ferguson-black-on-black-crime-issue-at-hand-its-not-about-the-cops-video/?advD=1248,334969

13 Facts About Ferguson the Media Will Never Tell You

by By Jim Meyers


According to protesters who erupted in violence after a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this was the case of a white policeman shooting an unarmed black teenager with his hands in the air in a community plagued by racial tension.

That's an account promoted by many in the mainstream media as well. But here are several facts about the case that are harder to find:

1. Surveillance video showed that shortly before the confrontation, 18-year-old Brown stole cigarillos from a convenience store and shoved a clerk who tried to stop him.

2. The autopsy report showed that Brown had marijuana in his system when he died.

3. Officer Wilson, driving to the call of a medical emergency, first encountered Brown walking in the middle of a street and told Brown and his friend to walk on the sidewalk. Brown responded with an expletive.

4. Wilson chose to confront Brown only after he saw the cigarillos in his hand and recalled the radio report of a robbery at the convenience store.

5. Wilson said when he tried to open his car door, Brown slammed it back shut, then punched Wilson in the face.

6. Fearing another punch could knock him out, Wilson drew his gun, he told the grand jury, and Brown grabbed the gun, saying "you are too much of a pussy to shoot me."

7. An African-American witness confirmed that Brown and Wilson appeared to be "arm-wrestling" by the car.

8. Another witness saw Brown leaning through the car's window and said "some sort of confrontation was taking place."

9. After Wilson fired a shot that struck Brown's hand, Brown fled and Wilson gave chase. Brown suddenly stopped. An unidentified witness told the grand jury that 6-foot-4, 292-pound Brown charged at Wilson with his head down. Wilson said Brown put his hand under the waistband of his pants as he continued toward Wilson. That's when Wilson fired.

10. A witness testified that Brown never raised his hands.

11. Gunpowder found on the wound on Brown's hand indicated his hand was close to the gun when it fired. According to a report, the hand wound showed foreign matter "consistent with products that are discharged from the barrel of a firearm."

12. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said the gunpowder "supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has particulate matter in the wound."

13. Wilson said Brown was physically uncontrollable and "for lack of a better word, crazy." He said that during the confrontation, he was thinking: "He's gonna kill me. How do I survive?" Legal experts say police officers typically have wide latitude to use deadly force when they feel their safety is threatened.

comments from readers

javaman 

How did a giant , violent , doped up jerk who attacked Wilson get transformed by the media into a "innocent gentle giant who held up his hands saying don't shoot"? As far as the evidence shows, the media lied profusely.

KajunTex  javaman 

I am with you on that!!! The media has that power to make or break anyone. One example comes to mind is how they sold America Obama as a qualified individual for president, without having one smidgen of evidence or proof that he was even qualified to be a professor at a university.

See more at
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ferguson-shooting-13-facts/2014/11/25/id/609483/?ns_mail_uid=42169935&ns_mail_job=1597070_11252014&s=al&dkt_nbr=lprtenju