Anti CCSS Warriors, the above picture is one I featured in a previous article, but serves my topic for today very well.
Since the ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) is now law, CCSS (Common Core State Standards) will NOT be a phrase you see. BUT it will be there all the same. The name has changed, but the agenda is STILL the SAME!
We know the new law uses ‘college and career readiness’, “challenging state academic standards”, STEM, and “Career Tech Education”.
Since the CCSS Machine (which includes all the OTHER names of CCSS, as well as the government involvement and the private businesses in bed with them) is so great at the ‘confuse them with a name change’ tactic, it will not surprise me to see even more new phrases being used as code for Common Core State Standards!
One example that you may, or may not, of seen/heard: “Lifelong Learning Skills”
Before we move into where I found this ‘new’ phrase, look at a dictionary’s entry for the word “lifelong”: lasting or remaining in a particular state throughout a person’s life
Anti CCSS Warriors, did you catch that? “Remaining in a PARTICULAR state “. When applying this definition to ‘learning’, I do not think it means what the CCSS Machine wishes you to believe it says!
Think about it, if we are to be educated and truly learning something, it will be impossible to remain in the same state of learning throughout one’s life. As we grow and mature, so does our learning capacity, as intended. However, we have seen enough evidence which is credible to know ANYTHING connected to the CCSS Machine’s educational reform of America will NOT give our students the foundation necessary for natural brain development or learning which will help them mature naturally.
So just where did I find this “Lifelong Learning Skills” used in relation to the ‘Common Core State Standards’ alter personality “College and Career Readiness”? The College and Career Readiness and Success Center (CCCRS) housed in AIR (American Institutes of Research)!
In preparing for one of my latest radio interviews, I found this 2015 Report from the College and Career Readiness driven entity. AIR is funded by many pro CCSS/CCR/CTE groups. At the top: the U.S. Dept. of Education!
You might like to know that the CCRS also has an overview guide for each of the states which had defined what ‘college and career readiness’ meant back in 2014. We know CCSS is NOT preparing our students for colleges and it is creating paths etched in confinement for careers.
Much like anything else the CCSS Machine has ground out in propaganda, the phrase ‘college and career readiness’ is hot air. So, how dumb does the CCSS Machine think Americans are? Dumb enough to think a name change will be enough to pacify us!
To see the College and Career Readiness and Success Overview Guide (2014) of what college and career readiness is defined by state by state:
CCRS Defintions Brief_REV_1
What you will find in this Report are the 6 reoccurring themes which include MORE exaggerated language. You find ‘grit and perseverance’ among the six themes.
It is important to note that there are many other themes, but this 6 are repeated state-by-state more than the others. Where have we heard the ‘grit’ phrase before? It was included in the U.S. Government Report titled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century”.
Also of note, not every state had a college and career readiness definition in this Overview. For example, the state I live in, NC, was not included. So I searched for what the definition is and found that it is almost the same as another state not included in the 2014 Overview either! To see the almost word for word copies, I give you the two states I compared, NC and FL.
Here is FL’s definition from their State Dept. of Education, “Students are considered college and career ready when they have the knowledge, skills, and academic preparation* needed to enroll and succeed in introductory college credit-bearing courses within an associate or baccalaureate degree program without the need for remediation. These same attributes and levels of achievement are needed for entry into and success in post-secondary workforce education or directly into a job that offers gainful employment and career advancement.” (the star denotes that you will need to follow another link to see what parameters ‘knowledge, skills, and academic preparation’ are to the FL DofEd) See the rest:
http://www.fldoe.org/schools/higher-ed/fl-college-system/college-career-readiness.stml
Here in NC’s definition as featured on the Hunt Institute’s website. Set in motion since 2014, “In North Carolina, students are considered career and college ready when they have the knowledge and academic preparation needed to enroll and succeed, without the need for remediation, in introductory college credit-bearing courses in English language arts and mathematics within an associate or baccalaureate degree program. These same attributes and levels of achievement are needed for entry into and success in post-secondary workforce education, the military, or directly into a job that offers gainful employment and career advancement.” To see what else the Hunt Institute supplies you as far as the way NC game to this definition, see:
http://www.hunt-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Did_You_Know_CareerCollegeReadinessDefinition_20150430.pdf
Anti CCSS Warriors, consider this:
If the states are using canned versions of the definition, how easy do you think it will be for each state to truly have a choice when it comes to NOT having Common Core (which hides behind the name ‘College and Career Ready Standards’)??
So when do the ‘Lifelong Skills’ come into play? Read on!
From the introduction of the Lifelong Skills Report, this excerpt, “Lifelong Learning Skills (LLS) provide the foundation for learning and working. They broadly support student thinking, self-management, and social interaction, enabling the pursuit of education and career goals. Collectively, LLS are the means by which students master academic content and translate knowledge into action. There is a growing consensus among researchers that LLS are discretely identifiable and actionable levers of support for meeting college and career readiness(CCR) objectives.“ Below you will see just one of the evidence based research tables which are offered up as ‘credible sources’ for LLS and CCR.
This is just the first table (critical thinking)! There are 2 more, one for self-regulation (image a pre-K, K, or a special needs student being 100% successful at this expected behavior) Following this is the SEL (social and emotional learning) table. Remember, anti CCSS Warriors, plenty of behavior intervention is planned for America, which will most definitely include social and emotional manipulation!
What follows these tables of How LLS will be interwoven into CCR, are the ASSESSMENTS!
See below:
Directly preceding the above graphic in the official report will be a note about an annotated bibliography. The Bibliography has this in the description, “…what lifelong learning skills are, how they impact and relate to college and career readiness and success outcomes, and how they can be taught and measured in the classroom, across the pre-kindergarten to workforce (PK-20W) spectrum.”
To get the AIR ‘Lifelong Learning Skills Report’ (2015): CCRS Lifelong Learning Skills Policy Considerations_0
To get the Bibliography (2014); The assessments to be used in measuring college/career readiness or have been used as reference will begin on page 26 and include The SBAC, PARCC, and many others, yet the top of the page tells you few very assessments can truly be used or trusted: CCRS LifelongLearning Bibligraphy
(If you are new to fighting against the Common Core, College and Career Readiness, the SBAC and PARCC are the high stakes assessments the U.S. Dept. of Education gave millions to create. See:
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/awards.html
Those awarded the millions were all pro CCSS, and guess, what, they are pro CCR, too!)
Closing:
In the title of this article, I asked a question. Do we have an answer yet? I believe we do. While those within the CCSS Machine would like us to believe the Lifelong Skills will enforce College and Career Readiness on a path to success, the evidence (from before the passage of the ESSA was passed to now) points to a lifelong sentence of going nowhere; of staying stuck; of failing to become what those students wish to become, but becoming exactly what the CCSS Machine determines them to become! Remember, the goal is pre-Kindergarten to career, which means the upcoming HEA re-authorization will be slam full of MORE Lifelong Learning Skills, social and emotional learning, and much more for EVERYONE in post-secondary education!
To see my previous article on the AIR CCRS Center:
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2014/11/13/tech-thursday-collegecareer-readiness-success-and-common-core/
This is nuts (not your research, the “college and career ready” stuff)! I’ve read online how people went to college and ended up with a degree that didn’t do much because apparently college didn’t provide the students with the experience loads of companies required, even for “entry level” positions. Now the students have loads of debt and are working the jobs they coulda had had they even not gone to college.
And these same forces, Big Government and Big Business, are also flooding the labor pool by keeping open the borders, pulling down wages.
I can already see where this “college and career ready” stuff will go. It will lead to where you have a labor force that will follow their masters, the bosses, without question, and will believe their other masters, Big Government.
When Barack Obama said he was gonna fundamentally transform America, he was talking about what he planned to do to the next generation.
Thanks, you are so on track with what is sure to be the nation’s future. However, I think the foundation goes back further than the current administration. If you have not read Berit Kjos’ booklet about the Global Common Core, please find it. She has a 100 yr timeline of educational reform moves which have made America ripe for what we are seeing happen right before our eyes.