The new federal law on education, ESSA, is SOLD as if the Feds return power to the states. Only politicians would lie and tell you that a 1061 page federal law returns power to the states.
The best question to ask is,
Why does ESSA give unprecedented power to the U.S. Secretary of Education that requires him to approve “state plans” that include the academic standards?
Those state plans have to coordinate with 11 federal statutes which means they must BE Common Core or something LIKE Common Core.
DO not be fooled. ESSA doesn’t get RID of Common Core, it embeds it in our state.
This FRIDAY at 10:30 am, the NH Commissioner of Education, Virginia Barry will offer a presentation to the Education Committee at the Legislative Office Building Room 207 on ESSA.
Parents are encourage to attend this meeting to hear our Commissioner explain this new law.
Will she explain how ESSA codified in law the expansion of pre-school programs? And at the same time explain how the Head Start program has been a drain on taxpayers with no real results to speak of? The Head Start studies showed Head Start was a failure but ESSA will expand the push for universal pre-school.
Will she explain that ESSA federal testing requirements are aimed more at assessing your child’s attitudes and dispositions versus academic knowledge?
As part of the ESSA law, states must come up with a PLAN for education that includes a “FAMILY ENGAGEMENT PLAN.” The US Dept of Education (USED) is supposed to come up with their own Family Engagement Plan that states MAY adopt, if they don’t want to do their own homework.
What about President Obama’s special project known as the “21st Century Community Learning Centers.”
[This] means that schools will be expanded to replace family and church as the center of every child’s life, offering myriad “services” including mental-health programs. Few things should alarm parents more than the prospect of the government’s assessing their child’s mental health and proceeding to fix any problem the government claims to find. But this is what the Republican Congress has given us.
Parents and legislators have a right to hear the truth. The good and the bad. Not a list of talking points provided by the supporters of ESSA which included the NGA and the CCSSO. (Common Core architects and supporters)