Mark my words; It will not only be the teachers who will become a part of the national database; student information will also be placed in the national database.

Guess who will benefit from a national database!  I daresay that Bill Gates, who has spent millions to shove Obama’s plan into place, will certainly get his money’s worth.

The Gates foundation “funded the development of Common Core’s standards, their promotion, their review and comparison with the best sets of state standards, and their validity, as well as influenced the membership of the standards development, writing, feedback, and validation committees (Dr. Sandra Stotsky, “Minding the Campus — Reforming Our Universities,” 9.9.10).

[An aside:  If you want to read about how Gov. Deval Patrick (Democrat) of Massachusetts took all control away from the public and from members of the Board of Education, including Dr. Sandra Stotsky, please go to the following link.  This story just came out today, 9.16.10:  http://www.milforddailynews.com/opinion/x2146872802/Stotsky-State-school-board-loses-independence ]

The national assessments are to be done online and will cost taxpayers unbelievable amounts of money to purchase the very latest multimedia technology for all students (again Bill Gates wins).  

Layers of technology staffers will be required to keep the technology functioning in every classroom because students will be taking frequent national formative and summative assessments that will contain performance-based simulations, interactions, digital media, graphing, etc.  The computer labs scattered around most schools will not suffice because the large numbers of students who will be involved with taking the national summative and formative assessments regularly will necessitate multimedia technology for each student.

Taxpayers will be required to pay for elaborate ongoing teacher training and evaluations on all the new and innovative multimedia technology required for the online national assessments.  

(To read about the national assessments, please go to the 9.15.10 article posted at: http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/09/15/are-we-ready-for-testing-under-common-core-state-standards.aspx )

To the taxpayers in all states (except for Texas and Alaska who refused to participate) that have adopted the Common Core Standards/Race to the Top, I say, “How are you going to pay for all your students in all your schools to be assessed online?  In a country that is already mired in debt, how are you taxpayers going to be able to afford to pay for these advanced technologies?”

I will end by sharing my graphic that helps to visualize how the Obama administration has taken over the public schools under the guise of Common Core Standards and Race to the Top:  

National standards  →  national assessments  →  national curriculum → teachers’ salaries tied to students’ test scores  →  teachers teaching to the test each and every day  →  national indoctrination of our public school children  →  national database

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com

=====================================================================

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ed-board-20100916,0,7451353.story

California Board of Education addresses teacher evaluation issue

Panel votes to create an online database devoted to efforts around the country to measure education effectiveness

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2010

Excerpts from this article:

The state Board of Education took up the controversial issue of teacher evaluations Wednesday, unanimously voting to create an online database to share information about local, state and national efforts to measure educators’ effectiveness.

The board also asked the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno school districts to propose specific ways the state can support local efforts to create more meaningful evaluation tools, including the value-added method of using students’ test scores to rate teacher performance…

Debate over the issue of teacher evaluations intensified in Los Angeles and around the nation after The Times wrote a series of articles and published a database using the value-added method to rank about 6,000 third- through fifth- grade teachers.

The California Teachers Assn. and the Los Angeles teachers union have opposed use of the value-added method, saying that students’ test scores do not accurately reflect a teacher’s effectiveness…

Long Beach Unified School District officials discussed their two evaluation systems, one approved by the teachers union and one a voluntary pilot program, that both use test scores as analytical tools.

Donna Garner

Wgarner1@hot.rr.com