FOM: CCSS/CTE “Hype”, D.C. Style

In the scheme of things lately, we anti CCSS (and CTE) warriors shouldn’t be surprised at the amount of hype being used to drown out the truth about the presence (or from the hypester’s perspective the non-presence of) Common Core Standards and it’s adult version, Career and Technical Education.

However, it’s a “Total Truth” that not only is much hype being created, but the bulk is from Congress itself. Oh, you can be sure the more private part of the CCSS Machine is busy churning out a lot of hype too.

 

Let’s get the Fib-o-Meter going, shall we?….

The Education and Workforce Committee:

The Ed/Workforce Committee  concerns itself with higher education, or as it’s also known, ‘post secondary’ education. The re-authorization of the HEA is supposed to be voted upon soon. It’s also related to the K-12 re-authorization known as HR5. Let’s see how the Ed/Workforce has taken hype and placed it into overdrive to try and divert us from what’s really embedded in that bill.

In one of my previously published Higher Ed articles, I shared with you some of the documents being produced to sell us on the supposed advantages of the HEA re-authorization. In particular, the U.S. House of Representative’s priority list for the Higher Ed Act. (see: https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/06/11/tech-thursday-more-alexander-hea-and-the-next-america/) *Note: the document I refer to is in the “Related Resources” paragraph, item #4.

A related article to our topic today:
https://www.commoncorediva.com/2015/03/19/tech-thursday-ccss-workforce-pushing-labor-reform/

The Ed/Workforce Latest Hype:

Pushing the ‘competency based’ fail so prevalent in all things Common Core and Career/Tech Education, is the Ed/Workforce ‘Fact Sheet’. (you can access the fact sheet and other related hype, http://edworkforce.house.gov/highered/)

Titled “Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act”, this document lays out the guts of HR3136 and its relation to the updated version of the HEA.
The “Total Fallacy”? Their words as follows, “As part of an effort to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the House Education and the Workforce Committee is working to support more innovation across the nation’s college campuses.”
The “Total Truth”? Sec. Arne Duncan gets more power! See this direct quoted excerpt:
“Promotes innovation in higher education by directing the secretary of education to implement competency-based education demonstration projects. The secretary is authorized to waive current statutory and regulatory requirements that impede the creation of competency-based education programs.” 

More “Total Truth”, this level of power means those education waivers our states have can be manipulated to fit this higher education competency agenda. In this 2014 bill which was passed, you’ll notice that the vernacular uses the word ‘entity’ when talking about who can lead the competency based education projects, but doesn’t condition these entities to schools of learning. You’ll also notice P3 involvement and MORE assessments! All “Total Truths” left out of the hype’s main page, feel good message of improving education. Here’s the bill, so be sure to read it for yourselves to see what I mean. h.r._3630_-_ans_-_final

 

One Last “Total Truth”:

Did you notice the above paragraph mentions a 2014 bill, but the introduction stated the latest hype? How can 2014 be the latest hype? Simple, here’s a screen shot of the recent Tweet the Ed/Workforce Committee shared on the social media giant, which led me to the 2014 bill.