If you live in Utah, you’ve probably heard or read some of the debate about the  impending changes to the Kindergarten through Grade 12 curriculum. I tend to agree with opponents to the Common Core Curriculum on several levels, including cost of implementation, quality of the materials, and federal interference in what ought to be locally controlled. Today I received an email that articulates some of my concerns and explains how parents can make their voices heard on this important subject. I’ve received permission from Oak Norton to post the email below:

Please read it.

The four Common Core experts that came to Utah spoke with the Governor on Monday. We did deliver the Utahns Against Common Core petition with signatures to that point to the governor so he does have a copy of what citizens would like to see enacted. This doesn’t mean people can’t continue to sign the document so please keep spreading the word.

On Tuesday the panel met with dozens of legislators at a luncheon and that’s where the most benefit was. The presentation was similar to what was shared with the public last night and will be made available soon online for everyone to watch. It was excellent. The Tribune reported on it here but without mentioning there were also Democrats in attendance that agree with us on the dangers of Common Core.

http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile2/54466339-218/core-utah-common-education.html.csp

Among the points brought up was this salient tidbit. There were 3 people who drafted the original math standards for Common Core before they were reviewed.

Only one of the 3 was a mathematician, and he said the standards were not very high, certainly not on par with Asian countries who finish algebra 1 by 8^th grade. Common Core sets algebra 1 completion in 9^th grade. Dr. Jim Milgram, the only mathematician on the review panel, refused to sign off on the standards for this same reason – that we were falling behind our Asian counterparts by design.

The CC geometry standards also contain a method of teaching congruent angles that has never been successfully used anywhere in the world instead of standard methods.

Also strongly represented were the facts that Common Core is violating federal law, subverting the Constitution, will destroy the study of quality literature in English, and is just bad policy to centralize thousands of districts and schools local decisions into a federal department that is distanced from local needs. Here’s a link to the 3 federal laws being directly violated.

http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/common-core-violates-3-federal-laws/

Here’s what we need you to do right now. It will only take a few minutes.

1) Call your legislators and demand they work to get us out of Common Core. If you don’t know who they are, go here and plug in your address.

http://le.utah.gov/GIS/findDistrict.jsp

2) Pick up the phone and call the Governor and ask that he works to get us out of Common Core and onto higher standards. His office number is 801-538-1000.

You can read and learn more about this issue at http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/ . If you live in Utah, please consider signing the petition there as well.

winner-winner, veggie dinner 🙂