Summit Masters, Unite

Those lyrics, my Warriors, are from the epic musical “The Sound of Music”. They were written by Oscar Hammerstein II. While most of us may remember watching this movie, some of us may not have a clue about the plot of the musical. If you are among those Warriors, who don’t know, please, look up the movie, it’s message is one we can apply to our War vs the Core.

No, my fellow Citizen Warriors, I’ve not lost my mind. My article DOES have an education point to it. I just wanted to set an image in your mind, first.

While most of the conversation is still honed in on the 2016 Elections, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, FEE (as in Jeb Bush’s organization), is all about their upcoming National Summit for Educators. It’s to be held late November 2016 to early December 2016.

You’ll love the title for the Summit (aka: conference), “Transforming Lives Through Education”. Almost sounds like one of those medical TV specials, doesn’t it?

However, it’s HOW the Foundation is transforming student’s lives that we need to know.
CBE (Competency Based Education), as in the ESSA/WIOA blend of workforce based, skills for 21st Century jobs for a 21st Century economy!! (ESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act/WIOA: Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act). Also connected is the HEA (Higher Education Act). How so? ESSA states ALL students MUST be post-secondary (after high school) ready by graduation. WIOA has HEA embedded through the lifelong career aspect.

Before I move on, please let me state that as a former candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Mr. Bush seemingly disappeared after he bowed out of the 2016 campaigning. We should not, for one minute, think that any of the other former candidates (including Mrs. Clinton) will just ‘disappear’. Oh, no, my Warrior friends, these pro CCSS Machine members and their groups will find a way to resurface in education and/or policy and legislation. We’ve seen it time and time again since the CCSS Machine first cranked up its motor to chug up that summit of reforming education.

What you see above is a screen shot of the ‘hottest education topics’, according to FEE. Note the CCSS Machine agenda is hiding in plain sight. Right down to the most recent Congressional propaganda moves to shove us up the CTE mountain of ‘success’ for America.

What I left out of the screen shot are the CCSS Machine groups helping FEE pull these efforts. You’ll see some very familiar names when you access the entire press release:
http://us12.campaign-archive2.com/?u=09d4da7e5bba844967f502861&id=bc41f0e0f7

The featured speakers on these ‘hot 3 topics’? Jeb Bush, David Coleman, Salman Khan, and Angela Duckworth (her 2013 TED Talk on ‘Grit’ is sure to be an attention getter). See:
https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en

What are the other topics? Look below:

If you’ve not see the FEE 2016 Reform Agenda: http://www.excelined.org/about-us/reform-agenda/

If you’ve not seen the College/Career Pathways Initiatives, The CCRS (College and Career Readiness and Success Center (housed at AIR, Inc., another CCSS Machine member organization), has a general overview. If you wonder where your State is in the CCR Paths Initiative, just do a general internet search. I found several States already well on their way to 100% workforce based, CBE, alignment. AIR’s: http://www.ccrscenter.org/sites/default/files/AskCCRS_CareerPathways.pdf

Maybe your State already has employed FEE to help guide you through the ESSA mandates/updates/regulations, etc. Yes, all that help so you can be more aligned and climbing that mountain to someone else’s profit, can be yours for a price. Check out the PDF sales pitch: http://www.ecs.org/ec-content/uploads/Implementing-ESSA-Claire-Voorhees-ExcelinEd.pdf

NC, where I live took FEE up on their offer to help align our students to ‘learn to earn’ via ‘education’.
Here is Voorhees’ presentation from the NC General Assembly’s files: feeinnc
This isn’t the first time the FL based organization and NC have joined together. Back when “College and Career Readiness” was still called Common Core State Standards, the roads between north and south were heavily traveled.

Lastly, Warriors, if you noticed, I used quotation marks for the word education. If you are wondering, it’s because I believe the CCSS Machine’s push up ‘Alignment Summit’ (or ‘Alignment Mountain’, if you like) has completely transformed a classical based, academic education and replaced it with something far less desirable. The last, little push the CCSS Machine needs is when the HEA (Higher Education Act) gets its very own re-authorization as a federal law.

Closing:

If you’ve ever wondered how education would feel about this shift, if it were a living being, please read my open letter:
http://www.patriotinstitute.org/education/columnists/lmt/education-2/ (As you can guess, no student; no teacher would dare to dream climbing a mountain of ‘dreams’ like this.)