Teach for America Pushes Bill Ayers’ ‘Culturally Responsive Teaching’

Go to EAGnews.org to read the full story.

Now that the word is out about what “social justice” education really is, progressive ed organizations have taken to altering their speak in an apparent attempt to avoid further scrutiny.

‘Culturally responsive teaching’ is a phrase now widely used among the teach-for-a-revolution crowd, and unfortunately, Teach for America is all about it.

While supporters of culturally responsive teaching would likely argue that the definition is not the same as that of “social justice education,” the result is the same — socialist, anti-white, anti-American indoctrination.

In recent years, TFA groups across the country have been pushing for culturally responsive teaching by hosting workshops, providing classroom resources and lessons, and by partnering with organizations and native tribes to recruit culturally responsive educators.

For example, in Los Angeles, TFA alumni are gearing up for a workshop later this month that aims to “define… what culturally and linguistically responsive teaching is and why it is necessary in our failing schools…”, and to “build knowledge and create the context for addressing the needs of underserved students in terms of their sociopolitical and sociolinguistic relativity in the American educational system.”

Read the rest.

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Carnegie Corporation: From Philanthropy to Frightening Control to Common Core

By Danette Clark

In the trailer for the upcoming Common Core documentary, Building the Machine, Political Scientist Dr. Andrew Hacker refers to the little man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz when suggesting that, with regard to Common Core, we don’t know who’s pulling all the strings.

Well, we know there are lots of little men (of little character) with big corporate interests behind Common Core. We also know Bill Gates and the Obama administration have thrown their full weight into the initiative.

Of course, Common Core is the concerted effort of many — after all, 45 states signed on before the standards were even written — but it does appear that Carnegie is the one great and powerful force working all the controls from behind the curtain.

From the creation of high school academic credits and the College-Level Entrance Examination Program, to federal Pell grants and the establishment of the largest testing organization in the world (ETS), Carnegie Corporation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (hereafter “Carnegie” or “the foundations”) have made important and historic contributions to America’s education system.

With each contribution, however, has come increasing influence and power. Likewise, with each passing decade and sitting Carnegie president, the foundations’ objectives for use of that power have changed dramatically.

For example, according to Carnegie.org, former Carnegie Corporation president, John W. Gardner, led the foundation into an “era of strategic philanthropy — the planned, organized, deliberately constructed means to attain stated ends.” From Gardner, “…the Foundation inherited a commitment to… moral leadership as a key feature of a democratic society, and thus of its educational systems”.

As a psychologist, Gardner believed in the merging of education and behavioral science to address world problems and create social change.

Gardner also opened the door to federal intrusion and control by inviting the federal government in to collaborate with Carnegie on the implementation of new education initiatives.

David Hamburg, Carnegie president from 1982 to 1997, further expounded on the foundations’ work of diffusing social science and education research “to improve social policy and practice”. To that end, Hamburg forged partnerships with leading institutions that, according to Carnegie.org, “had the capability to influence public thought and action”.

During this time, other partnerships were formed as well, with anti-capitalists and communists, also bent on using education to engineer a new social order.

Although Carnegie now claims to support and promote best practices in education, it has long supported one reform over all others –the Annenberg Institute’s Coalition of Essential Schools — the same progressive, indoctrinating, whole-child reform supported by President Obama for more than twenty years.

In fact, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) movement has become such an integral part of the work of Carnegie Corporation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, that it could easily be argued that the three are now synonymous.

This is important for those opposed to Common Core to realize and learn from, because while we were sleeping, the most influential ‘philanthropic’ organization in the country gave birth to an exceedingly politically radical education initiative, drove its expansion for three decades, and now carries it forward into the creation of Common Core.

Carnegie Brings Anti-Capitalists and Would-Be Common Core Creators Together

In 1981, Carnegie donated seed money to CES founder, Ted Sizer, for the research project that led him to start the Coalition of Essential Schools.

As explained here, the late Ted Sizer was a humanist who preached that schools must shape children morally and politically in order to create a more just world.

Co-founder of CES schools, Deborah Meier, is a Marxist-socialist and a long time friend and associate of Bill Ayers, Mike Klonsky, and other anti-American educators.

Just a year after CES was officially established at Brown University, Carnegie created the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy (now known as the National Center on Education and the Economy).

The Forum, led by Marc Tucker, commissioned a Task Force on Teaching as a Profession to address the need to “fundamentally change the nature of the education system to take advantage of a professionalized teaching force and to base that new system on higher standards for both students and teachers”.

The Task Force was led by James B. Hunt and its members included former Carnegie President John W. Gardner, American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, Vice-President of IBM Lewis Branscomb, and Coalition of Essential Schools Co-Founder Deborah Meier.

Remember, James Hunt and IBM President, Louis Gerstner would later come together to form Achieve, Inc., the organization charged with writing the Common Core State Standards. Hunt’s organization, the Hunt Institute, is part of the joint effort of NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve in creating Common Core.

Under Tucker’s direction, the Carnegie Task Force wrote and published a report titled, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, which called for and led to the creation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, of which Tucker, Meier, and Hunt served as founding board members.

In 1987, with the help of Carnegie Corporation, Marc Tucker went on to establish the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) as an independent institution that would continue the work of the Carnegie Forum.

Damning enough on its own (but we’ll explore further nonetheless) is the fact that NCEE’s Vice President Judy Codding was one of four charter principals who participated in the creation of Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools. According to CES, Codding led two early Essential School efforts in New York and later greatly contributed to the expansion of “Coalition ideas” in California.

According to NCEE’s website, …”in 1991, NCEE invited the University of Pittsburgh, 23 states, 6 cities and three national foundations to join with it in creating New Standards, a collaborative committed to… student performance standards and matching assessments to launch the standards movement in the United States”.

This initiative, which later came to be known as the New Standards Project, was cited at the 1996 National Education Summit (that gave birth to Achieve) to outline the “qualities of a world-class education standards system”.

From its start, the NCEE New Standards Project has been led by CES reformers,  including Annenberg’s current and long-time Executive Director, Warren Simmons.

As admitted by NCEE, “many of the leaders in the New Standards work went on to play leading roles in the development of the Common Core State Standards, which built in part on the foundation laid by (The) New Standards (Project)”.

In other words, Common Core was, in fact, built on the foundation laid by Carnegie and the Coalition of Essential Schools.

ANNENBERG AND GATES FOUNDATION MONEY SPENT THE WAY CARNEGIE SEES FIT

With the Carnegie-created NCEE working in nearly two dozen states to lay the foundation for a new national standard, Carnegie began focusing its efforts on infiltrating additional districts and states.

Just before becoming president of Carnegie Corporation in 1997, Vartan Gregorian served as director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform where he led in the selection and distribution of Annenberg Challenge grants used to implement CES reform in various school districts across the country, including Chicago where an Annenberg Challenge site was led by communist Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.

While the Annenberg Institute admits that each group chosen to receive grants had to meet “unique conditions” and that “independent, non-profit entities” were “specially created” to run each Annenberg Challenge site, it was not made known that several of those ‘independent entities’ were specially created by Carnegie. Yet another blow to the “Common Core is state-led” claim; even the early roots of Common Core weren’t state-led.

In Chicago, for example, it was reported that three of the largest independent education foundations came together in support of and lobbied for the approval of the Annenberg grant proposal submitted by the Bill Ayers consortium. However, it was not reported that the presidents of two of those so-called ‘independent education foundations’, namely Adele Simmons of the Mac Arthur Foundation, and Patricia Graham of the Spencer Foundation, were from Carnegie.

Patricia Graham, whom Obama himself (in an attempt to diminish the influence of Bill Ayers) later credited with choosing him to chair the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was an advisor to Carnegie Corporation and had recently served as chair of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

In Pennsylvania, it was the Philadelphia Education Fund (PEF) that was ‘chosen’ to receive an Annenberg grant. PEF’s executive director was Warren Simmons, now director of the Annenberg Institute. Just prior to that, Simmons co-directed the Carnegie/NCEE New Standards Project.

Carnegie’s control also appears to extend to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has reportedly invested more than $2 billion in Common Core.

The same year Gregorian become president of Carnegie Corporation, he met with and convinced Bill Gates to form the Gates Learning Foundation (now the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), to which Gregorian was appointed as one of only six directors.

With the title of advisor to the Annenberg Foundation under his belt, and now, holding great power over both the Gates and Carnegie foundations, Gregorian began meeting with leaders of other top organizations across the country to discuss ways to combine their grant making efforts.

From inception through today, the education arm of the Gates Foundation has been led by Annenberg/CES reformers, likely all placed there under the direction of Gregorian.

Current director of the Gates Foundation’s College Ready in the United States Program, Vicki Phillips, was Executive Director of the Annenberg Challenge at Greater Philadelphia First.

Up Next – Biased Science Standards and Mandated Curriculum

Achieve, Inc. and Carnegie led in the creation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that were released last year.

These standards came to be in the same way as Common Core’s English and Math standards — the almighty Carnegie said it shall be done, gathered its favorite progressives together to complete the task, provided the funding, and had its partner, the US Department of Education, throw its weight behind it.

Not surprising, NGSS teaches the Big Bang Theory and evolution as fact, with no reference to creationism. Man-made global warming is also a fact in these standards and students are required to explore solutions to the warming crisis.

While this document doesn’t specifically state whether Carnegie “launched” or simply “advanced” CCSSO and NGA, both organizations, by way of Carnegie funding alone, are certainly subject to Carnegie control.

CCSSO, which also receives federal funding, has been in Carnegie’s pocket for decades. In 1987, while Carnegie’s Task Force on Teaching (CES co-founder Deborah Meier, James Hunt, etc.) were busy establishing the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, another leader in CES reform, Common Core’s Linda Darling-Hammond, was gearing up to lead the drafting committee of CCSSO’s newly formed Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC).

INTASC, founded with Carnegie dollars, of course, was created to develop standards “compatible with the advanced certification standards of the new National Board for Professional Teaching Standards”.

The most recent version of INTASC’s Model Core Teaching Standards were specifically revised to align with the Common Core State Standards.

With student and teacher standards complete, Carnegie’s focus as of late has been on professional development and the creation of Common Core lessons, texts, and assessments.

So what’s next? Will Carnegie and its bestie, the US Department of Education, secure their hard work and vested billions by mandating specific Common Core content?

Even before Common Core was implemented in most states, there was a Call for Common Content issued by the Albert Shanker Institute, proclaiming that “core curriculum must build a bridge from standards to achievement”.

The Albert Shanker Institute is led, in part, by Linda Darling Hammond and Anthony Bryk, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Signatories include several CES educators and power players in the creation of Common Core, such as Achieve, Inc. Founding Chairman Louis Gerstner, former Achieve, Inc. President Robert Schwartz, and Carnegie’s Marc Tucker.

In other words, the great and powerful Carnegie is already calling for common content. It’s just a matter of time.

‘Radical Math’: Social Justice Indoctrination in Math Class Courtesy of Common Core Assessment Creators and Obama-Backed Ed Reform

By Danette Clark

Re-post with new information. Original posted January 12, 2013.

To ensure that not a single minute of precious indoctrination time is wasted in the school day, liberal educators have incorporated brainwashing into every course subject, including math.

Next month, the organization, Creating Balance in an Unjust World, will hold its annual conference on “math education and social justice”.

The conference is sponsored by Radical Math, an organization founded by Jonathan Osler, a math and community organizing teacher at a Coalition of Essential Schools high school in Brooklyn, NY.

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the progressive education reform movement expanded by President Obama and domestic terrorist William Ayers through their work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 90’s.

As I explained here, Common Core ‘architect’ David Coleman’s Grow Network also worked with Chicago Public Schools, Obama, and Ayers during that time.

Common Core assessment creator, Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as education advisor to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, is a long-time advisory board member to the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools (BayCES/National Equity Project).

Radical Math and the Creating Balance Conference both provide training and resources for teachers to learn how to teach mathematics for social justice.  For example, participating trainers coach elementary school teachers to not use traditional math lessons when teaching children to calculate the cost of food. Rather, they recommend making it clear to students that in a truly just society, food would be as free as the air we breathe.

Radical Math’s website provides over 700 lesson plans and other resources covering a wide range of political and social issues (with extreme bias), including globalization, the redistribution of wealth, and various ways the poor are discriminated against and oppressed by whites, banks, corporations, the rich, and the government. One such resource, Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, contains chapters titled, “Sweatshop Accounting”, “Racism and Stop and Frisk”, “When Equal Isn’t Fair”, “The Square Root of a Fair Share”, and “Home Buying While Brown or Black”.

Rethinking Mathematics is a creation of Rethinking Schools, an organization that refers to William Ayers as “a long-time supporter”. In 2011, Ayers was keynote speaker at  Rethinking Schools’ 25th Anniversary Benefit.

Co-founder and co-organizer of the Creating Balance in an Unjust World/Radical Math Conference, Kari Kokka, works with Linda Darling-Hammond at the Standard Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE), the very organization currently creating Smarter Balanced and PAARC assessments for the Common Core State Standards.

Common Core ‘Architect’ David Coleman’s History With the Ayers and Obama Led Chicago Annenberg Challenge

By Danette Clark

Re-post. Original posted June 17, 2013. Also found at EAGnews.org.

Referred to as ‘Common Core lead standards authors’ by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), David Coleman and Jason Zimba are just two in a long list of Common Core creators whose academic roots are with the education-for-a-revolution machine borne by Annenberg Institute, Carnegie Corporation, Bill Gates, et al.

Today, Coleman and Zimba are head of Student Achievement Partners, an organization that played a leading role in developing the standards and actively supports districts and states in implementing them.

Prior to Student Achiement Partners, Coleman and Zimba were co-founders of the Grow Network (now owned by McGraw-Hill Company). Grow Network began as a pilot program in New York in 2000. Less than a year later, the Chicago Public Education Fund began negotiating a contract with Grow Network on behalf of Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Public Education Fund (‘The Fund’) was created in 1998 by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) board of directors, which included Barack Obama as board chairman and communist Bill Ayers, as co-chair.

President Obama’s recently appointed Commerce Secretary, Penny Pritzker, was one of twelve founding board members appointed to The Fund.

Obama himself worked with The Fund for the next several years as a leadership council member, along side Bill Ayers’ father, Thomas Ayers, and brother, John Ayers.

From Catalyst Chicago, March 2000:

“The Chicago Annenberg Challenge will close up shop in June 2001, but its efforts to improve public education will live on through a new community foundation…the Chicago Public Education Fund…”

The Fund existed and still exists to carry on the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge — that work being the expansion of Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools, the reform movement that now (even absent Common Core) indoctrinates students in several states and districts nationwide with a Marxist-Communist political, moral and social ideology.

In 2001, shortly after Arne Duncan began his stint as CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), David Coleman’s newly formed Grow Network solidified its $2.2 million contract with CPS to provide the district with data driven student performance reports for the 2002-2003 school year.

In CPS’s 2002 Education Plan, which introduced Grow Network as a new initiative, President Obama is listed as a member of the district’s planning and development advisory committee. The report also names John Ayers and Communist-Maoist Mike Klonsky of Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop as participants in CPS’s education plan discussion groups.

In 2004, Coleman and Zimba sold Grow Network to McGraw Hill, which continues its lucrative partnership with CPS today. In fact, two former Grow Network members now work for the Chicago Public Education Fund — one of them as its managing director.

The fact that Grow Network has history with the Ayers/Obama/Annenberg led Chicago school system, and was recruited by the Ayers/Obama/Annenberg created Chicago Public Education Fund, doesn’t necessarily implicate David Coleman and Jason Zimba as supporters of Chicago’s radically progressive style of education. However, given Coleman’s progressive upbringing and the fact that CPS paid more than $2 million to bring his untested and unproven program to the district, it does seem likely that Coleman and Zimba had prior connections to the Chicago ed machine.

Fast forward to today and we see each of these players still working to expand the Annenberg/Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) reform model, a model whose teaching strategies, lesson plans, and curriculum resources are identical to those now being used with Common Core.

Communist, domestic terrorist, and creator of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Bill Ayers, continues to speak on behalf of the Annenberg/CES reform effort and provides professional development to teachers and principals from CES schools and districts.

From the White House, Obama and Duncan promote, by name, Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop and the Coalition of Essential Schools while funneling billions to states that have adopted Common Core.

Carnegie Corporation, which has continued to support Annenberg/CES reform over the years, now also provides heavy funding to the Council of Chief State School Officers for the creation and implementation of Common Core.

Name Names — Radical of the Week

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE LARGEST PROGRESSIVE INDOCTRINATION MOVEMENT IN THE U.S.

RADICAL OF THE WEEK

Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as education advisor to President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, is currently developing assessments for our new national curriculum, the Common Core State Standards.

Darling-Hammond is a long time advisory board member to the National Equity Project, formerly known as the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools and the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (or BayCES). The National Equity Project/BayCES opened in 1991 as a regional office for Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools (CES).

CES is an outgrowth of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and is the progressive reform movement behind Common Core.

Through an organization she co-founded called the School Redesign Network, and through the National Equity Project/BayCES, Darling-Hammond has worked closely over the years with socialist, Deborah Meier, communist, Bill Ayers, and several ultra-liberal organizations, including the crooked and recently de-funded ACORN, to open new progressive schools and transform existing public schools into progressive indoctrination centers. This reform effort was once widely known as the ‘small schools initiative’ or ‘small schools movement’.

To read more about Meier and Ayers, look for them at the Name Names page.

The most liberal school systems in our country today known for political and social indoctrination are districts that dove head first into CES/small school reform years ago and remain there today. Namely, Chicago Public Schools, New York City Public Schools, Oakland Unified School District, and Seattle Public Schools (among others).

Today, the National Equity Project’s main focus is addressing “race and class-based gaps in achievement… resulting from historical and institutional biases”. In short, ‘white privilege’.

Darling-Hammond has long been an advocate for repaying what she refers to as “an education debt” owed to African-Americans, a view fostered by many radical educators, including Obama friend, the late Derrick Bell, who was also an advocate for reparations for slavery.

The National Equity Project provides ‘equity coaching’ to educators in numerous school districts nationwide. This is the same equity coaching that brought us the ‘peanut butter and jelly sandwich is racist’ mentality that made news last year.

Darling-Hammond, who also had a hand in the creation of the controversial CSCOPE curriculum in Texas, recently endorsed the American Humanist Association’s Ten Guiding Principles for Teaching Values in America’s Public Schools. These principles include global awareness, a commitment to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, social justice, and service to an ‘interdependent world’.

Read more about the ‘education debt’ here. Also, see the other faces behind the Coalition of Essential Schools at Name Names.

Name Names — Radical of the Week

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE LARGEST PROGRESSIVE INDOCTRINATION MOVEMENT IN THE U.S.

RADICAL OF THE WEEK

Vartan Gregorian

Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation, formerly served as president of Brown University. In 1996, Gregorian briefly stepped in as acting director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which was then housed at Brown.

In his role as acting director, Gregorian was instrumental in the creation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Gregorian selected domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, who personally selected Barack Obama, to work on the board of the CAC. The mission of the CAC was to expand Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools throughout Chicago and surrounding areas.

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the progressive education reform movement currently indoctrinating children nationwide. CES is behind both the nationally proposed Common Core State Standards and CSCOPE in Texas. Find several articles explaining the connections at the Common Core / CSCOPE / CES Connection page.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Vartan Gregorian to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

In addition to his post as president of Carnegie Corporation, an organization that has long funded progressive education initiatives, Gregorian currently sits on the board of the Qatar Foundation.

The Qatar Foundation was started by the founder of Al Jazeera and currently employs the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan Al Banna. Despite this and other deep ties to Islamic terrorists, the State Department and the U.S. Department of Education have entered into an extensive partnership with the Qatar Foundation for the purpose of implementing several programs, including the ‘Connect All Schools’ Initiative. Read about the initiative at U.S. State Department and Department of Education Give Islamic Terrorists Access to Your Children.

In 1997, Fox Point Elementary School in Providence, Rhode Island entered into a collaborative learning partnership with Brown University, thereby dedicating the elementary school to the tenants and agenda set forth by the Coalition of Essential Schools. Fox Point Elementary then changed its name to Vartan Gregorian Elementary.

See other radicals behind CES schools at Name Names.

CSCOPE – How Did Texas Get Here?

By Danette Clark

In 1992, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) entered into a partnership with Texas Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Austin Interfaith to direct funds to low-performing schools for use in teacher training, parent leadership training, and after-school enrichment. From this partnership, several IAF ‘Alliance Schools’ were created.

Texas IAF is part of the Saul Alinsky-founded and Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation. Saul Alinsky is the Marx-loving, God-hating community organizer known for his influence on President Obama and ACORN.

According to a 2009 study by the Annenberg Institute, Texas IAF’s Alliance Schools network grew to “roughly a quarter of the Austin Independent School District’s elementary schools and half of the district’s high-poverty schools” in an eight-year period.

The study also reveals that Texas IAF and Austin Interfaith developed a collaborative relationship with former Austin ISD Superintendent, Pascal Forgione.

The Alliance Schools model can now be found in approximately 160 schools throughout the state — a speck on the map when compared to the number of Texas schools infected by the Coalition of Essential Schools.

As I wrote in Unravelled! The 30 Year Agenda Behind Common Core, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the radical reform movement behind both CSCOPE and Common Core.

CES, which is modeled after secularist reformers like John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Paulo Freire, and George Counts, functions as a communist-style education movement with the stated intent of ‘educating for a more democratic and just society’.

Westbury High School in Houston and R.L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth are two of the original twelve schools that were established (or ‘redesigned’) by Theodore Sizer in 1984 to become CES member schools.

According to StateUniversity.com, the R.L. Paschal Essential School, which is a small autonomous unit embedded within the larger Paschal High School, survived and flourished by “keeping a very low profile“.

The largest expansion of CES progressive reform in Texas came years later by way of the Houston Annenberg Challenge.

In 1993, then President Bill Clinton announced that Ambassador Walter Annenberg would donate $500 million to improving public schools in America. It was this $500 million, plus matching grants from private sources, that aided in the nationwide expansion of  Theodore  Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools.

Through the Annenberg grant, communist and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers created the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, wherein he and Barack Obama served on the board to further expand CES schools in the State of Illinois.

Both Ayers and President Obama have continued to this day to do their respective parts to promote and expanded CES schools nationwide. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop still aids schools and districts across the country in implementing progressive reform through smaller learning community grants and funding from sources like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Brown University, and the Annenberg Institute.

In addition to the well known Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Walter  Annenberg’s ‘Challenge to the Nation‘ also provided for the expansion of progressive reform to Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay area, South Florida, and Houston.

In Houston, it was the Brown Foundation, Houston Endowement Incorporated, and several corporate and business leaders who collaborated to apply for a piece of the challenge grant money being offered by Annenberg.

Delia Quintanilla served as the first director of the Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC). Six local universities were called on to provide support to the HAC by providing university staff, faculty, and students to interact with districts and aid in implementing reform.

The Annenberg Institute kicked off the HAC by choosing eleven ‘Beacon Schools’ to “‘light the way‘ to quality school reform for other funded schools”.

According to Chester Finn, Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the  Beacon Schools chosen appeared to have been ‘cherry picked’. Finn reported that the eleven schools chosen by Annenberg were doing better than the Houston average when they entered the program and were performing at about the same level three years later. Therefore, although it may have appeared to outsiders that the first few years of reform in those eleven schools was effective, as Finn stated, he could “scarcely tell what was caused by Annenberg and what may have been shaped by other influences”.

In 1995, Humble Independent School District opened Quest Early College High School. Quest is an Annenberg Challenge Grant Beacon School, a First Amendment School and a Coalition of Essential Schools Mentor School.

CES mentor schools act as a model of reform for other schools, offering school study tours, advocacy training, legislative action sessions, and professional development opportunities.

A Houston Annenberg Challenge 2 year summary report revealed that by 2001, approximately 100 metropolitan schools had already introduced Critical Friends groups on their campuses and the HAC had trained 300 coaches in both Annenberg-funded and non-Annenberg-funded schools.

The report further revealed that promising teachers and curriculum trainers were identified through group collaborations. Specifically:

“Teachers from Annenberg schools collaborate actively in Critical Friends Groups, Literature Study Circles, Professional Academies, Teacher Writing Groups, and Teacher Action Research Teams. From these activities expert teachers emerge as peer leaders in roles such as Critical Friends Group Coaches, Content Specialists, and Reading Learning Facilitators. Furthermore, a number of teachers have become certified as curriculum trainers in national programs including the Coalition of Essential Schools and the New Jersey Writing Project.”

Just as educators were identified and chosen through these collaborative efforts, some were also identified as not worthy to continue their involvement in the progressive reform process.

According to an article printed by the Houston Press in 1998, director Delia Quintanilla was dismissed a little more than a year after the Houston Annenberg Challenge got off the ground, and a troubleshooting team from the Annenberg Institute was being sent to Houston to “evaluate and audit the effectiveness of the local administatration of the grant”.

Annenberg Challenge National Coordinator, Barbara Cervone, expressed “serious concerns about the leadership, coherence and pace of the Annenberg effort in Houston”.

Despite tensions between proponents of CES’s radical reform methods, HAC pressed on with strict oversight and instruction from the Annenberg Institute and further donations from ‘philanthropic’ organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation.

Annenberg established the New Visions in Leadership Academy to train like-minded radicals for placement as principles into Texas Annenberg/CES schools. According to this job posting, “more than 300 seated school leaders from Houston-area K-12 districts” graduated from New Visions in the first 10 years.

In 2002, Humble ISD passed a $230 million bond measure to build Atascocita and Kingwood Park High Schools and redesign existing elementary, middle, and high schools.

Cecilia Hawkins, who served as the principal of Quest Early College High School for four years, left her position at Quest to work with community organizations in an effort to expand district reform.

From CES’s website (2005):

“Inspired by its experience with the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Houston Annenberg Challenge (now the Houston A+ Challenge) through Quest High School… Humble has not only put into place a process to remake its high schools but it has reorganized its entire district…”.

What has come as a surprise to many involved in exposing CSCOPE is the fact that several principals and superintendents seem to have no problem with the Anti-American content, errors, and ‘fuzzy math’ found in CSCOPE lessons.

Understandably, it must be difficult to accept that there could be that many radical educators in a state like Texas, willing to break the law and deceive children and parents for profit or to advance a political agenda.

The fact is, Texas is a big state with several univerities; and universities, for the most part, have often been a refuge and breeding ground for radicals.

CES schools have always relied heavily on the school-university partnership to implement and advance K-12 reform. ‘Professional development schools‘ are often created wherein universities and schools collaborate to “prepare new teachers, to renew the professional knowledge of veteran teachers, and to conduct site-based research into teaching and learning”.

In many states, CES has infiltrated and affected university course offerings for up and coming teachers, principals, and superintendents.

For example, Sam Houston University, as a requirement for superintendent certification, offers an internship course led by Dr. Shirley Johnson. Johnson is the executive director of Texas Coalition of Essential Schools.

According to Johnson’s course syllabus and guidelines, all interns must complete a “Leadership Profile”, the cost of which is to be paid by the student directly to Texas CES. Students are then given the opportunity to attend a feedback session related to the leadership profile — no doubt to allow the instructor to gauge whether the student would be a productive leader in a CES-style school.

Several other avenues exist for identifying prospective radical educators for placement placement in these indoctrination centers.

Texas ASCD, for example, who partners with CES and actively promotes and expands CES reform, identifies, recruits, and trains teachers and curriculum leaders, many of whom are identified in collaboration with local universities.

Read about the connections between Texas ASCD and educators behind CSCOPE and Common Core here and here.

CSCOPE is Common Core

In January of 2010, Governor Rick Perry formally rejected the nationally proposed Common Core State Standards, stating that he would not “commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standards and tests”.

Ironically, the very people behind Common Core were already actively working within Perry’s state and had been for many years.

Linda Darling Hammond, one of several radical eductors behind the design of CSCOPE, has worked with Texas schools for years through her organization, School Redesign Network.

Achieve, Inc., an organization that has aided in authoring the Common Core standards, launched the American Diploma Project in 2005. Texas was one of 13 states to join the America Diploma Project Network.

As I wrote here, Achieve, Inc. is not only made up of several Coalition of Essential Schools/Annenberg reformers, but it was literally created by leaders of the National Governors Association and the Annenberg Institute.

The Grow Network (now owned by McGraw-Hill) was founded by David Coleman, who is said to be ‘the architect’ of Common Core. In 2004, the Texas Education Agency entered into a four-year, $17.7 million contract with Grow Network for online Personalized Study Guides to be provided to Texas educators and students.

Considering many of the same educators behind CSCOPE are also behind Common Core, and considering the rumor that Common Core offered to purchase the CSCOPE program for use with the national standards; it appears that CSCOPE was a ‘test-run’ for Common Core.

It seems likely that Texas is the guinea pig and CSCOPE a pilot project –being tested before going all in and using it with Common Core standards in more than 45 states.

It can’t be a coincidence that the same educators behind Common Core just-so-happen to have been chosen to contribute to the design of CSCOPE. Those educators, Wiggins, Tighe, Hammond, Jacobs, and others, have spent years providing professional development to Texas educators over, and over, and over on how to use their designs and teaching strategies, the same designs they are teaching Common Core states to use with Common Core standards.

Here’s an interesting side-note — Although it has been more than three years since Texas rejected Common Core, former Austin ISD Superintendent Pascal Forgione, the same superintendent who has worked hand-in-hand with Alinsky’s IAF and Linda Darling Hammond’s School Redesign Network, is participating in a conference later this year in Austin to discuss Common Core.

Forgione is now executive director of Educational Testing Service’s K-12 Center located in Austin.

K-12 Center works in partnership with the CCSSO and other organizations to develop Common Core assessment systems and also partners with the Alliance for Excellent Education, where Linda Darling Hammond serves on the board.

The conference on Common Core, in which Forgione will be the keynote speaker, is scheduled to take place August 12th-14th in Austin.

Did Forgione not get the memo that Texas rejected Common Core, or does he know someting that we don’t?

‘Gay Biblical Satire’ Performed by Students at CES School — the Model of Education Reform Behind Common Core

By Danette Clark

Despite many emails and phone calls protesting the use of tax dollars and the participation of students in a play mocking Christians and the Bible, Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Public School opened tonight with the first of three performances of ‘The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told’.

Masslive.com reports that the “satirical comedy by Paul Rudnick asks “What if Adam’s partner in the Garden of Eden wasn’t Eve, but Steve?” The promotional material says that not only Adam and Steve, but also Jane and Mabel experience life’s joys and perils from the biblical world to the modern day.”

Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Public School is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) and can be found listed at Schools, Districts and Organizations Indoctrinating in Your State.

CES schools are behind the national Common Core State Standards and CSCOPE in Texas. Read about the connections and how President Obama and Bill Ayers started it all at Unravelled! The 30 Year Agenda Behind Common Core.

Racist PB&J Sandwich Rationale Courtesy of Obama-Launched Education Reform Movement

By Danette Clark    September 18, 2012

Verenice Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland, Oregon, believes the mention of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is racist.

Since this story was released by the Portland Tribune on September 5th, there has been quite a bit of outrage. Gutierrez has been referred to as a ‘loon’, a ‘leftist-loon’, a ‘liberal loon’, a ‘jack-fool loon’, and a ‘whack-job’, just to name a few. But in her defense, I think everyone should know that Gutierrez is not just some random loon. She is one of thousands [God help us] who have been trained to think this way by friends of our president, who work within an education reform movement built, in part, by our president.

The newspaper reported that Principal Gutierrez and many, if not all, of Portland Public Schools’ leaders have received training from Glenn Singleton’s ‘Coaching for Educational Equity’ program. Singleton’s book, Courageous Conversations About Race, is being implemented as a district-wide equity training platform.

Glenn Singleton is the founder of Pacific Educational Group (PEG), which actively promotes Derrick Bell’s Critical Race Theory in public schools nationwide. I wrote about PEG earlier this year after Breitbart.com exposed the organization and revealed that the late Derrick Bell was a friend and mentor of President Obama.

Singleton uses Bell’s Critical Race Theory as a foundation of his organization to encourage educators and students to talk about race. PEG admits that it targets white culture as the source of the problems minority students face.

Portland Public Schools is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) which partners with Singleton’s organization, PEG, on issues of racial equality and equity coaching for school districts.

CES is a massive network of thousands of radical schools and affiliate organizations that has President Obama largely to thank for its success.

In 1996, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative was launched by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. The Annenberg Institute’s mission was to expand the work of Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools to youth across the country.

Obama worked with communist Bill Ayers on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge funneling large sums of money to CES schools, which was then housed in Brown University. That work, combined with the work of Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, literally parlayed CES into an extensive nationwide network of social justice schools, educator training mills, and curriculum development organizations.

Education advisor to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, Linda Darling Hammond, is a long-time advisory board member for the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BayCES), a national affiliate center of CES. Glenn Singleton is also a BayCES board member.

As president, Obama still promotes and funds CES schools, even donating a portion of his unearned Nobel Peace Prize loot to a few CES affiliate organizations.

Several friends, associates, and appointees to the president have participated as class speakers and attended forums and speaking engagements in support of CES schools, including Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Cornel West, Van Jones, and Kevin Jennings.

As part of their blatant attack on white middle class America, both PEG and CES peddle the ‘white privilege’ theory. At Harvey Scott K-8 and other Portland schools, where peanut butter sandwiches are insensitive, school leaders are holding “intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives” to help teachers “come to understand their own ‘white privilege’” in hopes that they can then change their teaching practices to boost minority student performance.

The ‘white privilege’ guilt-trip has gained a lot of momentum in recent years. Increasingly popular is the annual White Privilege Conference which is attended by thousands of educators and students from school districts all over the country.

To read about the White Privilege Conference and other CES schools that have made the news for all the wrong reasons, go here.

Al Jazeera Founder Provides Arabic Language Course to U.S. Students

By Danette Clark    Originally posted on May 27, 2012 at RBO2.com

Beginning in September 2012, elementary students at PS 368 in Manhattan Hamilton Heights will be taught Arabic twice a week. Although several schools offer Arabic language courses, PS 368 is the first public school in New York to mandate Arabic as a required part of its curriculum.

The program was created as a partnership between the Global Language Project and Qatar Foundation International. Qatar Foundation International in Washington, DC is a special project and affiliate of the Qatar Foundation, which has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Qatar Foundation was started in 1995 by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who launched the international Arab news channel, Al Jazeera in 1996.

The Qatar Foundation recently appointed Tariq Ramadan to head its new Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) in Qatar.

Ramadan, who was previously banned from entering the United States, is the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan Al Banna. Ramadan’s ban from the country ended in 2010 when the Obama administration issued him a U.S. visa.

(More on the Foundation’s connections here.)

PS 368 s principal, Nicky Kram Rosen, claims one reason she selected the Arabic language course for PS 368 is because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) standing.

The IB program is funded and run by the United Nations and, according to Brannon Howse, founder of Worldview Weekend, the curriculum is extremely hostile to Christian and American values and big on humanism, pluralism, and the redistribution of wealth.

There has been much controversy in recent years over both the required reading and suggested reading lists from IB schools across the country. A majority of these books have been found to be full of graphic descriptions of violence, torture, incest, rape, homosexual sex, prostitution, and drugs.

The IB program has been promoted by progressive far-left educators for years.

Today, the curriculum is in over 1000 schools nationwide, many of which President Obama promotes as innovative schools for the 21st century.

One such school was established in July, 2009 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, an IB World School named the Barack Obama Academy for International Studies.