Linahan, Gutzman – Why Common Core Is Anathema To Federalism, Part 1

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “What they’re doing is omitting it from the framework that controls the teacher.  The teachers are evaluated based on the scores of the exams or the assessment.  You have to look at the strategies and tactics of how this is being implemented.  Now that we know, we can go in there as moms and dads and teachers and taxpayers and say: Can I see what you’re teaching my child?  Can I see how you’re teaching my child?  I want to see the professional development of the teachers.  I want to see the teacher manual.  Can I see who’s financially benefitting from the curriculum products that my child’s teacher is being evaluated on?” – Alice Linahan, Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  On this Friday in Austin, Texas, there is to be a hearing over new education standards that are to be introduced by some board that is claiming authority over same, and is going to propose a basic one-size-fits-all, you’re going to teach this when it comes to history in Texas schools.  Ms. Linahan is going to testify at this hearing, and I believe Kevin is going to offer a written statement that she can either read or introduce into the record.  Alice, why don’t you explain to the audience what it is that’s going on Friday, where it is, what time it is, and why you are attending, to alter what?

Alice Linahan:  Thank you for having me.  What this is on Friday, it’s an SBOE meeting, the State Board of Education.  In Texas we have elected officials from throughout the state that are on the State Board of Education, elected to represent us.  What is going to happen is there’s going to be a resolution presented by State Board of Education elected official Ken Mercer.  Basically, what has happened, you have to understand the big picture of this completely federal takeover of our education system that has been happening for a long time.  This didn’t just start with Obama, but it’s been on hyper mode since Obama was elected.

One of the people who is over this is a guy named David Coleman.  He’s kind of the mastermind behind Common Core.  You have to look at the strategies and tactics of how this Common Core, which is known as a set of national education standards, you have to look at the strategies and tactics of how it has been implemented and put into 45 states across our nation.  It was implemented and no one even really knew about it.  Then you look at who owns the copyright for these standards.  The narrative that they said is that it was state led by the Governors Association.  You have to look at what the Governors Association is.  It’s a think tank nonprofit out of Washington, DC.  This was not governors or state led.

Then you look at Texas as a state that said no to these Common Core standards.  We didn’t accept these standards.  Well, these people who are implementing this, they don’t just take no for an answer.  They come up with another strategy or tactic.  They came up with CSCOPE, which is the same as the Common Core in that they said it was district-led.  But when you look at it deeper, the copyright for the CSCOPE is owned by 20 education service centers that formed a nonprofit organization and they own the copyright.  That’s how this was implemented.

Now we look at where we are today with this Common Core philosophy of education.  David Coleman, who’s the mastermind behind those strategies and tactics, is now the president of the College Board.  What we’ve been hearing is that he was aligning the ACT, the SAT, and the GED all to these Common Core national standards.  Now what we have is the AP U.S. history framework, that’s kind of like CSCOPE, which was a curriculum framework that has been put out there.  When you look at the U.S. AP history exam, what it is doing is, whoever controls the assessment or the exam controls the content.  When you look at the framework, there’s major, major portions of our U.S. history that have been completely eliminated.

For example, in the period of the American Revolution up to 1787, the Constitutional Convention, almost every founding father is omitted, no Jefferson, no Adams, no Madison, no Franklin.  The framework excludes Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Saratoga, and Yorktown.  The commanders and the heroes of our pivotal battles have been completely omitted.  What they’re doing is omitting it from the framework that controls the teacher.  The teachers are evaluated based on the scores of the exams or the assessment.  You have to look at the strategies and tactics of how this is being implemented.  Now that we know, we can go in there as moms and dads and teachers and taxpayers and say: Can I see what you’re teaching my child?  Can I see how you’re teaching my child?  I want to see the professional development of the teachers.  I want to see the teacher manual.  Can I see who’s financially benefitting from the curriculum products that my child’s teacher is being evaluated on?

We’re going to go in on Friday and stand with State Board of Education elected official Ken Mercer as he puts forth this resolution to completely reject these Common Core philosophies of education and this new U.S. AP history, which completely goes around our state’s rights to control what is taught in the classroom in the State of Texas.

Mike:  Sounds like a coup.

Linahan:  That’s what it is.

Mike:  When you say mastermind, I’m envisioning the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain and the jets on either side of the stage that shoot the balls of flame up into the air and the echo effect: You will obey your federal Common Core overlords, citizen.  This sounds very similar to what was attempted in Louisiana.  We were actually a bit successful here in forcing the governor and the state education director to back off and treat it as a parish-by-parish basis.  There are, I believe, three parishes that have refused to implement the standards, which has now put in jeopardy some order of millions of dollars that Bill Gates has pledged.  There’s a lot of money at stake here, too, isn’t there?

Linahan:  Oh, yes.  I go around and speak to different groups.  I introduce myself as a mom and a wife, a mom who’s had two ethics charges filed against me.  What happened is we’d been organizing to push back against this.  We had a group of everyday moms and dads who started doing public information requests on the amount of money that our school districts were spending on CSCOPE, this curriculum management system, and these associations, the Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Association of School Administrators.  We got all the financial information on that and we had a great patriot who did an analysis and extrapolated all that out and wrote two white papers.  They were presented to the lieutenant governor and the attorney general.  From that, a full audit was set forth over CSCOPE.  We had a Wednesday night conference call.  The gentleman who did all the financials presented that on our conference call, the hundreds of millions of dollars that these organizations are getting.  The next morning I got a call from the Texas Ethics Commission that I had a file charged against me.  Basically what it said was with the organizing I was doing, I should be registered as a paid lobbyist.

Mike:  Oh, good grief.

Linahan:  The guy that filed the ethics charge against me, his name is Thomas Ratliff.  He is a State Board of Education elected official.  He’s also been a paid lobbyist for Microsoft for the past 13 years.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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