Ready or Not…

Anti CCSS/ESSA Warriors, we have seen the purposed shift from “Common Core State Standards” to “College and Career Ready Standards”. Together, we have found the evidence which proves these two phrases do NOT mean 2 different sets of Standards. They ARE one in the same. Together, we have found some of the CCSS Machine member organizations responsible for spewing education reform rhetoric. We have listened, seen, and experienced their fallacy ridden efforts to deceive Americans.

Trouble is, the CCSS Machine is NOT slowing down now that ESSA is the law of the land. In fact, the CCSS Machine is busy this summer cranking more fallacies up and out. The Machine only ASSUMES we Warriors are taking the summer break time to refrain from our “War Against the Core”.

Hardly!

The Superintendents Association:

If you have followed my blog long, you know how much of a part of the CCSS Machine, the AASA (American Association of School Administrators) or as they are more well known: ‘The School Superintendents Association’, is. If you are new to the blog, suffice it to say that this pro ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) group is VERY ready, willing, and so far, able to deceive Americans when it comes to ‘College and Career Readiness’. (*Note: the ESSA champions that CCSS (Common Core State Standards) will be gone and that CCR (College and Career Readiness) will replace them.)

So what has the AASA done to spread the deceptions? They have begun a national campaign called “Redefining Readiness”! This group is wasting no time in their pro ESSA efforts. Just a couple of months ago they were busy hosting ESSA webinars, writing reports on how great ESSA is for education to be returned to the States. And now, a national campaign..My, my..

To access the website for this new campaign, http://www.redefiningready.org/
It is interesting to note that you will not see the AASA’s logo or information on most of the webpages included on the Campaign site.
In fact it wasn’t until I got to the ‘Resources’ page that I found them. Here is an excerpt, “Take advantage of our resources to engage your schools and your communities in the important national campaign – Redefining Ready!  Our campaign seeks to equip school administrators with the necessary resources to easily implement the new college and career readiness metrics at high schools across the nation.  We have also created sample resolutions to help education advocates and government leaders support our initiative. Email RedefiningReady@aasa.org if you have resources you would like to share! “ What follows this exciting news, are sample letters, legislation, and other items for promoting College and Career Readiness. Get the downloads of the samples: http://www.redefiningready.org/resources/ (*Note: the resources will go straight to the download option in your computer instead of opening up the sample on a new page.)

According to the National Campaign, there are 3 types of Readiness for our students.
College ready (students are determined ‘college ready’ by how well they score on assessment benchmarks and/or academic benchmarks.), Career Ready (students are determined ‘career ready’ by indicating a career choice, meeting behavior benchmarks, and performing community service.), and finally, Life Ready (students are determined as ‘life ready’ by leaving high school with ‘grit’ and perseverance; a ‘growing’ mindset, and very little else. To see the different readiness requirements:
http://www.redefiningready.org/college-ready
http://www.redefiningready.org/career-ready
http://www.redefiningready.org/life-ready

(You can find the above on the “Take Action” webpage of the Campaign.)

Here are the organizations supporting the Redefining Ready initiative:
The AASA
The CoSN (Consortium for School Networking)
The NASSP (National Association of Secondary School Principals)
The NSR (National Superintendents Roundtable)
Phi Delta Kappa International

To see the School Boards and every day citizens supporting the redefining efforts:  http://www.redefiningready.org/supporters/

So far, Warriors, you can see there is tremendous cause for concern. However, what you see below is straight from the National Campaign’s website. I hope you spot the irony.
From the first paper (highlighted in red), comes this excerpt about the use of SLDS (student longitudinal data system), “The data for this study come from two sources: the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS), conducted by WestEd (WestEd, 2014), and publicly available school-level data from the California Department of Education (CDE).”

From the second highlighted red item, (which takes you to a Hechinger Report article, which has a study embedded (the study was conducted by a part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services). The evidence used is based on how successful ONE (one of the nation’s largest) school district was. Here is the actual study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3831577/

You can find the above screen shot, on the Redefining Readiness’ website’s ‘General Research’ tab.

There are 2 other Research topics as well. “College Ready Research” and “Career Ready Research”.
To access the “College Ready” items, see:  http://www.redefiningready.org/research-college-ready/
Here you will find dual enrollment (effects any educational choice utilizing this educational option), IB schools, and more topics.
To access the “Career Ready” items, see: http://www.redefiningready.org/research-career-ready/
Here you will find research which will impact EVERY person who gets a job. The first source cited is the Harvard University/Pearson Publishing project, “Pathway to Prosperity”. Yes, you will see the Redefining Readiness folks cite a 1988 Report. PtoP used THAT Report as inspiration. Oh, and alignment…
I first covered this very same Harvard/Pearson Project in early 2015. See:
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/03/12/tech-thursday-difference-between-careers/

As far as those credentials Redefining Readiness is so excited about? Here is one article where I researched and shared how damaging this is: https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/09/03/tech-thursday-just-say-no-to-nocc/

College and Career Readiness, WIOA, and HEA:

Since the CCSS Machine is out to streamline education from birth to the grave, two OTHER laws are in existence to make sure this happens in ADDITION to the ESSA.
These are WIOA of 2014 and the HEA (last re-written in 2008, renewed for funding purposes in Dec. 2015, and being re-written by some of the SAME backers as the ESSA)

WIOA of 2014 stands for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 and cemented into law Career Pathways, Career Clusters, apprenticeships, and so much more into our States. Job development grants, workforce based education, and data mining. The idea was to create it so that those wanting to work would have a certain track to follow and the data mining would help education plan and teach to these tracks. The WQDI (Workforce Quality Data Initiative) was created to pull this off. WIOA is from the U.S. Dept. of Labor. It covers the workforce..all ages, all educational choices.

HEA of 2008 stands for Higher Education Act. It,too has tons of data mining built in (yes, even then). It also had the foundation laid for educational alignment which we now see as work of the CCSS Machine. When ESSA was passed and the bragging speeches began in D.C. it was spoken as both a promise and a warning..that the HEA was next; that HEA was the final piece in the legislation which would complete the bridge from education to work.

I have covered post-secondary Common Core, Career Tech Education, or any of the other names the agenda uses, extensively. If you wish to have the evidence for WIOA, HEA, the WQDI, or how the 2017 Federal Education Budget Requests play into all this, please let me know.

I leave you this weekend, with the image below. Investigate the Career OneStop. See the CCSS Machine’s impact on jobs for our citizens. Then see how it connects to the education of today.