Common Core Talking Points

A Parents Guide

Created by Bill Adamsky and UOO Administrators

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Surprisingly, the majority of
people who are for CCSS
are not educators.
The Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, are
a new set of learning goals, or standards being
adopted by most states, and that all students in
public schools are expected to meet.
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WHAT IS CCSS?
The Common Core State Standards, or
CCSS, are a new set of learning goals, or
standards being adopted by most
states, and that all students in public
schools are expected to meet. Tied to
these standards are a series of high-
stakes assessments, which will be
administered several times every year to
all students, beginning in grade 3.
Currently, standards exist for only
English/Language Arts and mathematics.
Common Core standards and
assessments for other disciplines including
science, social studies, and art are
expected to be completed in the near
future.


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WHO WANTS IT?
Surprisingly, the majority of people who
are for CCSS are not educators.
Politicians, policy makers, billionaire
investors, corporations, and supporters of
the privatization of public education,
such as Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee all
embrace CCSS. At first, 46 states agreed
to adopt CCSS, but recently a number of
states are withdrawing, and a growing
number of voices from both sides of the
political aisle are making their concerns
and dissatisfaction with the
implementation of CCSS known.


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Whats wrong with the
CCSS?

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CCSS undermine a crucial pillar of
Democracy: control of public schools by locally-elected
school boards and puts more power into the hands of
the federal government whose policies are dictated by
private corporate interests such as textbook and testing
companies. Voices of teachers, communities, parents,
and students have been all but erased from the
decision-making process.
At the heart of CCSS is high-stakes testing. A
vast majority of parents already agree that too much
emphasis is being placed on standardized testing in
public schools to determine grade promotion and
teacher evaluations. Given the high stakes CCSS
increases not just the amount of test, but time spent on
test-prep in our classrooms at the expense of real and
valuable learning experiences.
Contrary to what proponents claim, educators
had little input in the development of CCSS. Of the
sixty founding fathers of CCSS, only one is an
educator. The rest are politicians, Wall Street investors,
and corporate CEOs who have their own agenda for
public education.
CCSS has never been piloted nor tested prior
to being thrust upon classrooms across the country.
There is no evidence or research to support the quality
of these standards for providing effective and
meaningful instruction. CCSS sets up students,
teachers, and schools for failure. CCSS architects freely
admit that the tests are more difficult and schools
should expect scores to drop. Some CC standards have
already proven to be developmentally inappropriate for
the younger grades, leaving many students as young as
2
6 feeling like failures already.
CCSS drains money out of already cash-
strapped districts. Schools that dont have the
technological resources necessary to support the
required online assessments attached to CCSS will
have to dig into their own pockets to upgrade. These
kinds of expenses tend to be covered by cutting arts
education, sports and extracurricular, and after-school
programs.
CCSS is the central pipeline pushing other
education reform policies that harm public schools.
The anticipated lower test scores for example will open
to door to more ludicrous claims by the reform leaders
that our schools are failing, which in turn will lead to
increased teacher lay-offs. Temporary workers will
replace teachers with little to no experiences such as
teach for America graduates or computerized
learning portals.
Our public schools will be closed, or turned
around, and replaced by charters that are often run by
for-profit entities with no accountability to the
communities or children they serve. Attached to CCSS
are new forms of online data collection (via the new
assessments) to be warehoused by third party private
companies like and funded in large part by Bill Gates.
For example, inBloom (contracting with many states
such as NY) will be collecting 400 points of private data
on every child. These corporations cannot guarantee
the security of this private student data, and has never
made clear precisely how they will use it.


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WHAT CAN I DO?
Parents and educators possess the most crucial voices in the
opposition of CCSS. Here are three steps you can take

Resist. Opt your children out of any and all state standardized
tests. United Opt Out has guides for all fifty states. What happens
to your child in a public school classroom is up to you, the parent.
Do not let any school administrator tell you different.

Enlist. Educate your neighbors about CCSS. Use social media to
spread your message. Host local meetings. Bring this to your local
PTA or other parent group. Get as many parents on your side as
possible.

Inform. Present ideas to your childs teacher and school
administrator alternative assessments that you demand which can
replace the tests to determine your child level of proficiency in a
given subject. See United Opt Outs Portfolio Letter as an
example.
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Persist. You may receive some requests from teachers, principals,
even other parents to tow the line and go along. You will hear that
your childs school will lose funding if you opt out. You might hear that
it will harm the performance evaluation of your childs teacher. You
may even hear that your child will be kept back or punished. Do not let
this sort of rhetoric dissuade you. While some legal precedent exists in
some states to attach the tests to some of these things, more often, its
myth and empty threats. KNOW the FACTS about your RIGHTS in
your state or district. Be prepared and informed. See the United Opt
Out Get Tough guide for handling some of these issues. See Who
Manufactured the Common Core in the toolkit for information
regarding corporate interest in CCSS.

Stand up for your child and your school. Deny them the data. Deny
them the money better spent on your childs school. Opt out every year
until this madness ends.




United Opt Out National
http://unitedoptout.com
@unitedoptout