Marc Tucker, who will be speaking tomorrow to New Hampshire legislators, can now take credit for the disastrous results he helped to bring about in Kentucky.

The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), headed up by Marc Tucker, has been consulting with the Kentucky Department of Education. Tucker is one of the Chief architects of the Common Core federal reform.

Remember when we warned that Common Core = NO VENDOR LEFT BEHIND? Well Tucker’s group is certainly cashing in now.

Here is a list of the NCEE funders: http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/09/college-professors-begin-revolt-against-common-core/ Included in that list are the typical ed reformers who’ve been involved in the dumbing down of public education in America, including Nellie Mae and The Gates Foundation. They are now out to take this national.
Maybe taxpayers should check to see how much your state department of education costs taxpayers and ask yourself, why do you need to hire consultants on top of that?

According to NCEE, “In 2014, the Commonwealth of Kentucky asked NCEE to help them engage in a process that could lead the state to create policies designed to enable Kentucky to match the performance of the top-performing nations in education.” Kentucky was implementing the federal education reforms but also asked the NCEE to further consult on the implementation process.

We also reported how Commissioner Barry was misleading parents on Kentucky’s achievement levels reported by the NH Dept. of Education. While the NH Dept. of Ed is reporting glowing reports on test scores in Kentucky, Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute says, ” ….the college/career ready numbers are tied to those graduation rate figures, it turns out that a gruesomely large proportion of our students are leaving high school with only a hollow piece of paper. Thousands being declared ready are not really getting the educations they need.”

BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS reported, “findings from two groups suggest the Kentucky Department of Education’s standards for preparing students for college and adult life are lacking and that the department’s statistics are misleading.”

We’re not sure what to believe but until we get the truth, do we really want to go down the same path as Kentucky? Given the latest election results in Kentucky where parents overwhelmingly supported the anti-Common Core newly elected Governor, we tend to believe parents weren’t all that happy with what unfolded over the last few years.

Now Tucker wants to do to New Hampshire what he’s doing to Kentucky. You can log into this archived audio (just type in any name) webinar and listen to the NCEE mislead the listeners about the findings in Kentucky. You should also note that one of Tucker’s biggest fans, Representative Mary Gile (D) is one of the participants.

During the webinar they detail their consulting work the NCEE did in Kentucky. They also talk about how NCEE plans on doing consulting work for other Departments of Education. In other words, not only do you give up local and state control in education, you give it up to the NCEE who receives their funding from the Federal partners in the Common Core reform.

Do you still wonder why Common Core has been dubbed, a federal take over in education?
One needs to ask Representatives Gile (D), Wolf (R) and Ladd (R) when they decided it was a good idea to abandon local control in education? These are the three representatives who are now pushing the Tucker agenda in New Hampshire.
ladd.nhhouse@charter.net
Mary.Gile@leg.state.nh.us
terry.wolf@leg.state.nh.us

Around 22 minutes they discuss waivers to state laws through the State Department of Education. In other words, if the state passes a law, the State DoE can essentially ignore the will of the people. It’s just another way to erode local control in education.

NCEE never tells the listeners about what the Bluegrass Institute reported in Kentucky. No wonder the NH Representatives are falling for all of this. They do not take the time to look past the sales pitch from the NCEE.

Here are a few articles archived at the Bluegrass Institute with some critical review of the achievement that has been reported. They have called attention to the misleading information that’s being promoted by organizations like NCEE.

Lack of improvement in Jefferson County’s NAEP Grade 8 achievement gaps no surprise
EXCERPT:
Within the measurement errors associated with the NAEP, which only examines a sample of students, there has been no discernable improvement in recent years in the achievement gaps for Jefferson County in the eighth grade in either math or reading.

Does NAEP really show much improvement in achievement gaps in Louisville?
No matter how we consider the Grade 8 NAEP Reading situation in Jefferson County, there has been no discernable improvement.

NAEP shows achievement gaps not improving in Kentucky
The new math and reading results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have unhappy news for Kentucky’s predominant racial minority.

First Observations for Kentucky’s 2015 NAEP data
Overall conclusions:
• The NAEP “All Student” Scale Scores indicate there has been no statistically significant improvement in Kentucky’s performance in either reading or math in either the fourth or the eighth grade since the year before Kentucky adopted the Common Core State Standards.
• If Common Core had impacts in Kentucky, they are too small for the NAEP to confidently detect them.
• Given that Kentucky has more experience with Common Core than any other state – including more years of state Common Core testing, which started back in the 2011-12 school year – the state’s flat performance in “All Student” scores is of concern well beyond the Bluegrass State’s borders.

After you work your way through the NCEE’s propaganda, you begin to realize that one must look beyond their “findings” to notice that things don’t appear as the NCEE would like you to believe.

Finally, even the Kentucky college professors are now crying foul. College Professors Begin Revolt Against Common Core , reports that the the plan to change the remedial college classes, was dramatically changed.
“CPE president Robert King explained to the Kentucky Board of Education during its October 6 meeting, students who formerly would have gone through remediation are now to be thrown into credit-bearing courses. But since such students obviously won’t be ready for real college work, the courses will be designated “co-requisite”—meaning lagging students will receive extra help of some sort so they can catch up.”

At what point will Tucker admit that his workforce development model, dubbed Common Core, is not only unraveling, but is harming students too? Why would New Hampshire want to follow Kentucky? Why again wouldn’t we look at states like Massachusetts to see what they did to bring their students the level of success they achieved prior to Common Core?

At 32:00 Representative Gile asks about all of the districts getting on board with the NCEE take-over. If you continue to listen, Rep. Gile even praises all of this. Note that none of this comes from the local districts or even the state.

At 40:00 Representative Gile references the improving test scores in Kentucky. Did she think to actually look at the critical analysis on those scores by the Bluegrass Institute?

She then goes on to ask about the public participation. We believe that was answered a few nights ago when the people of Kentucky elected an ANTI-COMMON CORE GOVERNOR. Will Rep. Gile listen to the good people of Ky or ignore them as she has ignored the parents in New Hampshire?

We have to admit, they did provide an interesting answer to her question. They simply haven’t engaged them yet. Why engage or reach out to parents in Kentucky who clearly reject Common Core? This is what the NCEE wants to shove down their throats! Instead they reference a “non-partisan” organization Prichard Committee will be the “voice.”

Where have we seen this before? Reaching Higher NH for instance? The front group for Common Core? The newly established organization to push the federal reforms?

At 50:00 Representative Gile asks about how to get NCEE into the state as consultants. Let’s make sure Rep. Gile (D), Ladd (R) and Wolf (R) know that we want NO part of the NCEE or Marc Tucker running our schools and further eroding local control in Education.

It’s bad enough they refuse to offer a critical analysis of what Tucker is selling at tomorrows meeting, it’s worse that this is may translate into Tucker further facilitating the federal reforms using our tax dollars.

NCEE