Tag Archives: PACE

VanOstern: Just Another Common Core Supporter Deceiving Parents

Is VanOstern trying to deceive parents on his support for Common Core? IF you look at his web site, he says,

In his debates with Chris Sununu, he dodges the question on Common Core. Chris Sununu has said he would remove Common Core from New Hampshire Schools. VanOstern diverts attention to his support for PACE. But most parents don’t know about PACE so is he trying to deceive them?

PACE is more Common Core testing in your schools. Like the other Common Core standardized tests, there’s no independent validity studies on PACE. This may be an experimental way to test your kids, but they will be testing them on Common Core.

Not only will they be tested on the dumbed down Common Core standards, but also the subjective “21st Century skills.” If your child doesn’t have the right dispositions or attitudes included in the competencies, they will not advance. That’s why parents often times complain about the subjectivity in the grading.

Whether it’s PACE, Competencies, SAT, Smarter Balanced, College and Career Readiness Standards, it’s all “Common Core.” Bureaucrats simply change the name to keep parents off their track.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is given 1x/year but PACE will incorporate multiple assessments. PACE was brought in to reduce testing but if you pay close attention, you’ll see testing increases with PACE.

VanOstern also mentions that PACE is based on “project based learning.” That in itself has become controversial. If this is how they test, that’s how they will teach. When did you ask the State of New Hampshire to mandate teaching methods? Shouldn’t that be left up to the local district?

If your child is tested on a project, how do you know they’ve mastered the content first? There is a lot of talk in the education community that facts and knowledge do not matter. Why not simply say literacy is no longer the goal in this education reform? They want to focus not on the “doing.” But public education is supposed to be about imparting knowledge so when students are ready, they can apply their knowledge. In other words, if you do not put in all of the ingredients, you cannot bake the cake properly.

How do you know all of the ingredients have been put in? That’s what a lot to people are asking now. How will parents know their children have mastered their math facts or know the natural origin of the material used to make common objects, in science?

This is the biggest concern parents have for this shift from mastering core content knowledge to Competency Based Education or what is used to be called, Outcome Based Education. We’ve even had a State Board of Education member in Maine write to all of our State Representatives and Senators, warning them about Competency Based Education.

Every few years education reformers come up with a new and innovative way to teach children but when you peel back the layers, you find the old failed fads that have been tried before. They dress them up with a new name (Competency Based Ed instead of Outcome Based Ed), sell it like it’s new and innovative, and then hope for the best.

All of this can be a bit confusing to parents which is exactly why we question the authenticity of Colin VanOStern. Why hasn’t he made a definitive statement on Common Core? Is it because Democrats were warned not to talk about the subject? One of the leaked emails from DNC deputy communications director Eric Walker described the Common Core as “a political third rail that we should not be touching at all.”

Is this why VanOstern wants to stay away this subject? Is this why he references the PACE testing scheme so parents will not recognize it as more testing on Common Core and competencies?

It sure looks to us like we are going to get the same failed standards, tests and curriculum in a VanOstern administration. He hasn’t offered parents any hope that things will get better and he dances around the subject and deceives parents in the process.

If you oppose Common Core and you want something better for your kids, VanOstern is NOT the person we want as Governor.

Check out where the candidates are on education here.
Vote on Tuesday, November 8th

Less TESTING with PACE? Think again

States have been ditching the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) for a few years now. Public backlash has caused some governors to reassess whether they should be using the highly controversial assessments in their public schools.

In NH, Governor Hassan and the bureaucrats at the DoE still can’t admit the SBA was a huge mistake on their part but since parents are refusing to let their kids take it, they are finding other ways to force compliance. The latest assessment scheme they came up with is the PACE assessments.

PACE assessments are in a few pilot schools throughout New Hampshire. Parents are starting to realize that even though they were told there’d be less testing with PACE, that simply isn’t true.

A recent post from a parent in a PACE district who refuses to let her kids take the standardized assessments confirmed this on Facebook:

More info on PACE

More Psychological Profiling of NH Students Coming

Thanks to Education Liberty Watch for notifying us of another way the Feds are gathering psychological data on our children. Make sure you REFUSE the Smarter Balanced, SAT, PACE assessments and the NAEP.

Constitutional, Statutory, & Privacy Concerns with Assessing Mindsets in the NAEP
The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) is planning to assess non-academic social and emotional “mindsets” like “grit” as well as school climate in next year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Here is a summary of the many problems with this approach with details available at Mindsets in NAEP – final:

It is unconstitutional – There is NO constitutional, statutory or moral authority for the federal government to conduct psychological research on innocent American school children via what is supposed to be an academic test.

It violates federal statute prohibiting such activity in one or both of two ways.

It goes against several Supreme Court precedents affirming parent’s inherent rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

These types of questions are highly subjective as admitted by leading experts and organizations in the fields of education and mental health.

Because of the weak and gutted federal privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), this very sensitive data can be shared with various agencies of the federal government and third parties and re-disclosed and used for “predictive tests,” which are notoriously subjective and incorrect.

This subjective, allegedly predictive data may then well be used to make life altering decisions for children affecting college entrance, employment, etc.

According to information uncovered at recent US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings, the state of data security at the US Department of Education is appallingly bad, so this sensitive data that the government should not have in the first place is not safe from hackers.

It seems that members of Congress and parents’ rights legal firms are starting to get interested in this situation. Please contact your US Senators and members of the US House of Representatives and ask them to oppose this illegal and unconstitutional plan via the power of the purse, especially if they are on the following committees:

US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee

US House Education and Workforce Committee

US Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee

Thank you and stay tuned!

HILLARY CLINTON admits NH Dept. of Ed is Breaking State Law?

We’ve been trying to warn everyone that the assessments used in our public schools are in violation of state statute. New Hampshire Families for Education has blown the whistle on this but it seems no one is listening.

According to their web site:
To top it all off, under state law, RSA 193-C, statewide assessments must be valid, appropriate and objectively scored. Smarter Balanced Assessments are not and can not meet these criteria, so they must be rejected

State statue says that assessments must be “valid” and yet the NH Dept. of Education has never made available independent validity studies.

Chapter 193-C:

The NH Dept. of Education is also involved in new PACE assessments that will replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Where are the independent validity studies?

Hillary Clinton while campaigning in New Hampshire a few weeks ago stopped to talk to a New Hampshire parent who brought this to her. Even Hillary Clinton admits the Common Core assessments are not valid assessments.

“I asked her if she was aware that the current [Common Core-aligned] tests are not even validated, and she replied, ‘yes,’” Lawless said.

This was confirmed in a letter to the editor: School testing unethical, invalid
“I regard Smarter Balanced as part of a nationwide system of compulsory participation in unethically managed, invalid research.”

When will someone hold the New Hampshire Department of Education and schools across New Hampshire accountable for breaking state law and using unethical and invalid research?

PARENTS: It’s almost time for schools to start administering the standardized assessments. This is a good time to NOTIFY your local school if you want to REFUSE to let your children take these assessments.

WARNING to NH Parents in PACE school districts

The fatally flawed Smarter Balanced Assessments didn’t even hit your child’s desk before the New Hampshire Department of Education was pushing for a different assessment for your children.

The new experiment on your children is called the PACE assessment. The PACE assessments will replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment in some of the elementary grades but maintain the emphasis on testing the non-academic dumbed down workforce skills and Common Core standards.

“In 2014-2015 Sanborn Regional, Souhegan, Epping and Rochester began implementing PACE. In 2015-2016 Concord, Pittsfield, Seacoast Charter and Manchester’s Parker Varney Elementary School began implementing PACE.”

But does PACE offer parents information on whether their child knows Math or English? We know that the Smarter Balanced math assessment was fatally flawed. If we are going to replace one bad assessment with another assessment, shouldn’t we be assured that this one will not have the same baggage as the last one?

At least parents could refuse to let their children take the Smarter Balanced Assessment. With the PACE assessments, and under the Competency Based Model, students do not move forward unless they pass their competencies. Will your child be able to move forward if you refuse the PACE assessment? Or is this a way to FORCE your compliance?

Will the NH Dept. of Ed. acknowledge a parent’s right to refuse but then deny a student the ability to move forward in their class if they do not take the PACE assessments?

To make matters worse, we are finding examples of other states using other “Common Core” assessments that parents are finding, reduce their ability to learn the actual academic content and thereby minimize their chance of acquiring the knowledge to move into engineering careers.

“Randy Houchins and John Pendergraff, two mechanical engineers, gave their testimony this week before the Texas State Board of Education. Both of these fathers have children in Texas public schools, and both men are very adamant that the Common Core process standards have managed to creep into their children’s math materials and STAAR tests. Common Core is illegal in Texas.”

Common Core is what the New Hampshire Board of Education adopted in 2010. The Smarter Balanced Assessment, the new SAT and the PACE assessments are all based on the Common Core standards.

If the testing of the standards are fundamentally flawed, at least with the Smarter Balanced and the SAT, parents could refuse. Unfortunately the Common Core curriculum and instruction will still deny them a quality math education, but parents could avoid the flawed tests.

With the PACE assessment SCHEME, there seems to be a real effort on the part of the NH Dept. of Ed along with the schools that are going to adopt PACE, to FORCE YOUR COMPLIANCE.

What can parents do? Go to their local board meetings and tell them you do NOT want PACE in your district. With Smarter Balanced and the SAT’s you get to decide whether or not you want your child to take those assessments.

Ask professionals in your local communities to start analyzing the standards and assessments in your schools.

In Texas, two fathers who happen to be Engineers took time to look at the Common Core assessments and share the problems they found with the State Board of Education.

Demand to see all of the testing materials in your school and given to your children. You have a right to see these materials.

If you do not identify the problems in your child’s education now, it may be too late when they get to high school and begin looking at colleges.

We know that the Common Core Standards do not prepare children for college programs in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. It’s up to parents to let their school boards and elected representatives know that you expect better from them.

These kind of psychometric assessments do not measure academic knowledge. They are there to measure your child’s attitudes, dispositions, values, etc. Parents are now starting to discover that they don’t want any part of this kind of testing on their children. They simply want to know if their child can answer basic math questions.

PACE will be used as a tool to force compliance to this kind of testing so while they “experiment” on your child, it’s up to you to make sure your board knows you want NO part of this kind testing.

NH Superintendents Working AGAINST PARENTS In Support Of HB323

New Hampshire Superintendents across New Hampshire are actively working against parents in support of HB323.
HB323 has a number of problems including the implementation of the Competency Based Assessments (PACE assessments) and we encourage parents to read these critiques if they are not familiar with this legislation.

Who supports PACE? The same people who stand behind Common Core and refuse to listen to parents in New Hampshire. People like Bill Duncan, (extreme political activist appointed to the NH Board of Ed recently)Chairman Raffio (actively lobbies against parents in support of Common Core) Rep. Rick Ladd (Chair of the House Education Committee) and Sen. Nancy Stiles. (Vice Chair of the Senate Education Committee and vocal supporter of Common Core)

Now we have Superintendents actively lobbying for passage of HB323. Why? Well many of them want to use the SAT as an alternative to the Smarter Balanced Assessment in 11th grade.

Parents might be saying, but that’s not a bad option, and we agree. Why not have options for schools so they can use the best test they feel is right for their students.

However parents need to also ask, what is PREVENTING the schools from offering the SATs now??
The answer: NOTHING.

So why do they need to pass HB323? It’s the $$$$$$$$$$

School districts could offer the SAT to their 11th grade students, they simply have to FUND IT.
The State could fund the SATs in all schools too. There is no need to pass HB323 in order to offer the SATs to high school students.

If you want taxpayer funded SATs then add it to your school’s budget. Do not lobby for the passage of HB323 because then schools are also tied to the PACE assessments.

NO LEGISLATION IS REQUIRED TO DESIGNATE THE SAT’s AS THE STATEWIDE ASSESSMENT FOR GRADE 11 STUDENTS. No legislation was ever required to designate NECAPs or Smarter Balanced as the statewide assessments over the last ten years.
No federal or state funding is at risk.

The PACE assessments come with all kinds of problems and it’s wrong to saddle the NH Senators with that baggage.

Governor Hassan got New Hampshire into the Smarter Balanced Assessment MESS and shows a lack of leadership when it comes to offering schools quality standards and testing materials. PACE is NOT an alternative parents are demanding. There is NO provision to OPT your children OUT of the PACE assessments and for that reason alone, the NH Senate should KILL HB323.

Previous posts on PACE: http://stopcommoncorenh.org/sccnh/2015/03/19/oh-my-look-at-whos-assisting-the-teachers-in-the-pace-program/

http://stopcommoncorenh.org/sccnh/2015/04/27/nh-moves-closer-to-full-implementation-of-the-failed-outcome-based-ed-model/

http://stopcommoncorenh.org/sccnh/2015/03/26/more-teaching-less-testing-please/

http://stopcommoncorenh.org/sccnh/2015/03/19/common-core-competency-based-ed-results-in-behavior-change-without-protest/

NH Moves Closer To Full Implementation of the Failed Outcome Based Ed. Model

We’ve exposed the fraud being perpetrated on parents across New Hampshire as the NH DoE continues to sell Competency Based Ed (CBE) as “new and innovative.” Everyone should know by now that CBE is the old rehashed Outcome Based fad from the 1990‘s renamed and being forced upon New Hampshire schools.

The “Competency Based Ed” fad has been called; School-to-Work, 21st Century Skills, Mastery Learning, Standards Based Ed, but we all know it’s Outcome Based Ed. CBE is based on a dumbed down workforce training model that categorizes children as human capital and teachers as facilitators.

The NH Dept.of Ed is doubling down on this model by not only forcing schools to use CBE, but force them to use CBE assessments too. The new PACE assessments are performance based assessments that has the potential of becoming a real problem in some of the core classes.

Let’s look at how CBE works in a math class and highlight the numerous problems we hear from math teachers and parents across NH.
A math teacher would like to teach the children about multiplying fractions. The teacher prefers to use the direct instruction method of teaching because they know the students need to be taught the algorithm. The teacher begins to teach students how to multiply fractions and may then decide to engage the students to use their memory to work through the problems.

That sounds like a logical approach to teaching math and yet under the CBE model, the teacher becomes the facilitator, kids work in groups and a lot of time is spent investigating and collaborating.

This approach to learning math might not be the most efficient way to cover an Algebra I class. However with CBE, the teacher is now forced through the competencies to make sure their students are collaborating while learning math.

1) Parents become frustrated knowing a great deal of time is wasted in group learning.
2) The student who may know math relatively well is often times the one who teaches the other kids in the group. This leaves some parents to question why their child is not receiving the teacher’s salary.
3) Kids often times report a lot of socializing is going on and not much learning.
4) After numerous group activities, parents begin to realize the learning process has been severely slowed down causing their children to begin falling behind their peers in schools that use a more logical approach to teaching.
5) Students often times admit they’re not learning much but hey, the teacher did manage to meet a competency by getting the students to collaborate.

In other words, there isn’t a lot of learning going on under this method because the reformers believe that the “collaboration” workforce skill is more important than learning the academic content.

This is what happens in some of classes that use the CBE model. How do we know this? We’ve been through this for the past 20 years with no real data to prove this model improves academic achievement. The NH DoE has certainly provided no independent data that CBE will improve academic achievement.

That’s one of many examples of how the Obama/Hassan administration is redesigning public education in NH. Not only are they forcing the dumbed down Common Core curriculum on our schools through the Common Core Assessment, they have also forced CBE on our schools too.

Did any NH parents ask for this? NO
Did the teachers in NH ask for this? NO
Did the legislators in NH ask for this? NO

This is all part of the Obama redesign in public education and being facilitated through the Hassan DoE.

NH Families for Education has been a vocal opposition to this entire redesign and has pushed back in an effort to support parents and teachers in NH. They are one of a few organizations that have been in this battle to stop the top-down approach to education and has been supportive of local communities driving the education in their own public schools.

Today NH Families for Education posted an article that included a letter from the U.S. Dept. of Education to NH Commissioner of Ed, Virginia Barry. In the letter it spells out how the Commissioner again, is working to fully implement CBE in our schools. This falls in line with the U.S. Dept. of Ed’s agenda to redesign public education in NH.

You are reminded that the parents, teachers and legislators in NH never asked for this.
You are reminded that this agenda comes from the FEDS.
You are reminded that our own NH DoE is almost fully funded by the Federal Govt.
You are reminded that the NH DoE is facilitating the Obama agenda, NOT the New Hampshire agenda.

We strongly encourage you to read the article and information provided by NH Families for Education.
We also strongly encourage you to read our prior posts on the PACE assessment program being pushed on our local schools.
The parents who refused to let their children take the Smarter Balanced Assessment are at a real risk if HB323 goes through as it’s been presented. There is NO provision to opt your children out of these experimental assessments based on the Outcome Based Education Model.

Knowing the OBE model is all about social engineering and not academics, we can only imagine how bad these assessments will be.

It’s critical that parents have the right to OPT out of those psychometric assessments if parents find the problems in the PACE assessments that they are seeing in the Smarter Balanced Assessments.

It’s unfortunate that the NH DoE lost the trust of many in New Hampshire by signing on to the SBAC with no input from the legislators, parents or teachers in NH.

Everyone is encourage to write to the NH Senators and tell them NO on the PACE assessments. NO on Competency Based Ed and NO to the Obama to redesign our schools. Senators@leg.state.nh.us

It is up to the local communities to decide what standards, curriculum and tests should be used for their students. The NH DoE has proven they are ill-equipped to make these important decisions for our children. We trust the local communities to begin the process of setting standards, choosing quality curriculum and testing students in a way they see fit.

More Teaching, Less Testing Please!

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: MORE TEACHING, LESS TESTING PLEASE!

It astonishes me how much standardized testing our children are being subjected to in schools today. We have the NECAPS, NWEA, NAEP, ACT, ACT ASPIRE, and now the Smarter Balanced Assessment Tests (SBAT). Do these tests accurately measure our children’s academic knowledge and help to improve education or are they mostly used for accountability for Federal and State funding, teacher evaluation and data mining?

Even before the first SBAT has been administered in NH, the State Dept. of Ed (DOE) is working on yet another assessment mechanism called PACE (Performance Assessment of Competency Education). The details about this program can be found on the Ed NH.Gov website. These tests are supposed to be locally created but if you read closely, they are linked to the achievement level descriptors of the SBAT and need State DOE validation. If PACE is locally controlled, why does it need to be included in NH’s No Child Left Behind waiver application that is to be submitted to the Federal Government by March 31st 2015 and why hasn’t the public had a chance to weigh in? Why are the tests given by our teachers throughout the year based on their lesson plans not enough to evaluate our children’s success?

Maggie Hassan issued a press release dated March 5, 2015 regarding the “Federal Approval of NH’s pilot of PACE. In it, Scott Marion, Director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessments and Rye School Board member, who has been working on PACE with the NH DOE, said “the PACE competency-based education system provides closer monitoring of each individual student than standardized-tests do and provides the results quickly enough to actually help to improve teaching”. This would seem to mean that the Smarter Balanced tests, on which we have spent millions of tax dollars along with countless classroom prep hours, do not improve education!

PACE also attempts to measure student’s attitudes, behaviors, and dispositions through what the State calls “Work Study Practices” using “performance tasks”. The NH DOE also promised to test for dispositions in the renewal of the Federal No Child Left Behind Waiver. By NH State law, statewide assessments are supposed to measure academic knowledge not a child’s psychological makeup.

Parents around the state and country are opting out of SBAT, and that is a problem for the Educational Industrial Complex. Is the NH DOE now creating a high-stakes system for children? If parents find the assessments inappropriate or the material included objectionable, will they find it difficult to refuse PACE because student’s grades and promotions are now tied to these Common Core aligned assessments? Parents have the Constitutional right to direct the education of their children.

Ask the NH DOE about PACE. Find out what promises they are are making to the Federal Government in the renewal of the No Child Left Behind Waiver and how it will affect NH students and teachers. We must insist that parents and citizens be informed and included in the conversation before these initiatives are adopted!
Shouldn’t we be investing more of our time and tax dollars on teaching and less on testing?

Angela Pont
Portsmouth, NH

Common Core & Competency Based Ed Results in Behavior Change Without Protest

Common Core Results in Behavior Change Without Protest:
WHY IS the Smarter Balanced Assessment (computer adaptive) DANGEROUS?
Why are the new PACE Assessments DANGEROUS?
Why is Competency Based Ed (aka…Outcome Based Ed) DANGEROUS?

Why is the State of NH under Governor Hassan now fully implementing all of this in NH directly from the Obama Agenda?

Peg Luksik in this SHORT video explains why.
One of the BEST/short videos you will want to watch.

OH MY: Look at who’s assisting the teachers in the PACE program

There are two organizations that will be working with NH teachers and will be developing the new PACE assessment program in New Hampshire. Here is some information on those organizations and the people behind them.

Remember, the NH DoE is telling us that these are “local” assessments developed by our teachers. Local assessments that have to be validated by the NH DoE (that’s hardly local control folks!) and that the teachers will be working “closely” with these organizations to develop the assessments.

The Feds now control our local schools and the State facilitates it.

1) NCIEA

Scott Marion (Exec. Dir. of NCIEA, a non-profit developing PACE with the NH DoE) and Rye School Board member:

“Competencies are statements of critical knowledge, skills, and often DISPOSITIONS that go beyond content standards. They reflect fewer and bigger major ideas of the discipline than more discrete content standards. High quality assessment systems are needed in order to support inferences related to student learning of competencies, especially if the competencies (learning targets) reflect major concepts and skills of the discipline. That is, we need multiple assessments to accurately assess student learning of these complex sets of knowledge, skills and DISPOSITIONS. Further, these assessment systems must include the types of tools capable of measuring students’ learning of these cognitively complex domains. More bluntly, performance-based or similar types of assessments must play a central role in the assessment system.”

George Will explains what “assessing” dispositions means: “Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct “disposition,” meaning those who do not embrace today’s “progressive” political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the “professional disposition” teachers need. She is now studying to be an aviation technician.”

Folks, through the PACE assessments they will be grading your child’s dispositions. That’s not only subjective, that has nothing to do with testing academic knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVl84r0fF8s
In this video if you fast forward to 1:24:00 you can listen to a parent confront Scott Marion on his condescending opinions towards parents who have concerns over the Common Core Standards.

In Marion’s presentation to parents in NH, he also defends the Common Core/ Smarter Balanced Assessment. The same assessment that we are now being warned about.
“The Smarter Balanced Common Core Mathematics Tests Are Fatally Flawed and Should Not Be Used. An In-Depth Critique of the Smarter Balanced Tests for Mathematics”

Scott Marion was just appointed Executive Director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment in Dover, NH. This non-profit organization just landed a very lucrative role in the development of NH’s Performance Assessment for Competency Education (PACE) program, which is aligned to Common Core standards. This PACE program is part of an existing pilot program in four school districts and also featured in the NH Department of Education’s 2015 No Child Left Behind WAIVER application. If approved, Scott Marion’s company could provide Common Core aligned assessments to every New Hampshire school district. Why would Scott Marion bite the hand that feeds him? It’s hardly surprising that he defends Common Core.

2) Here’s the other non-profit organization that is developing the PACE program with the NH Dept. of Education, the Center for Collaborative Education:

***** Quality Performance Assessment: Since the fall of 2008, CCE has partnered with the NELLIE MAE Education Foundation to explore the power of performance assessments to transform student learning and teacher practice. In the process, CCE established the Quality Performance Assessment Initiative (QPA), a collaborative effort to design a performance assessment model that measures students’ critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills—the activities required by the COMMON CORE State Standards, and that are required for college and career readiness.

In its initial phase, the QPA team has worked closely with a diverse group of 20 schools to build teacher assessment literacy, strengthen and document local assessment systems, and implement common performance assessments across schools. This work has led to creation of a set of COMMON CORE-aligned performance tasks, with teacher materials and student work samples that have been field-tested in schools. The experience and insights of educators have also yielded field-tested professional development models and tools to support the use of performance assessments.

Funded by GATES, Nellie Mae and the US DOE

Dan French, Executive Director, Former Director of Instruction and Curriculum for the Massachusetts Department of Education, and special educator. Ed. D. from UMass./Amherst. Author of 1998 Phi Delta Kappan article, “The State’s Role in Shaping a Progressive Vision of Public Education.”

He used to work for the MA DoE in the mid-1990s and left (you can speculate over the reasons) after attempting to prevent the development of academic standards in both ELA and history/geography. He has no background knowledge in any area. His position at the MA DoE involved student attendance.

Richard Dubuisson, Consultant, has worked in diverse educational environments as a teacher, academic director, and consultant. Most recently, he worked with several high schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire as a school change coach. Prior to that Richard co-founded Year Up, a college-credit earning, workforce development program in Boston that became a national model. Richard is a former high school math teacher and is committed to school improvement as a path to closing the opportunity divide in this country.

Jacqui Holmes, Program Assistant, has volunteered as a teaching assistant in the Lewiston Public Schools, working primarily with English Language Learners. She recently earned her Bachelor’s degree from Bates College where she studied Latin American History, Women and Gender Studies and Education.

Competency Based Education is a rehashing of the failed Outcome Based Education from the 1990′s. The focus is on dumbed down workforce training and changing values in children versus improving literacy and academic excellence.

It’s important to know who is pushing this in New Hampshire and why. There’s a lot of money to be made off of the local taxpayers.

Stop Common Core NH

Save Our Public Schools