Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Parental Rights’

THIS is why we need the Parental Rights Amendment!

Parents don’t even realize that the state now considers their parental rights something that are delegated to them by the state, rather than being unalienable rights endowed by Nature and Nature’s God! If a doctor decides to play god or someone decides to make a false accusation, your rights as a parent can be suddenly revoked, and you’re considered guilty until proven innocent!

News 10 reports:

A Sacramento family was torn apart after a 5-month-old baby boy was taken from his parents following a visit to the doctor.

The young couple thought their problems were behind them after their son had a scare at the hospital, but once they got home their problems got even worse.

It all began nearly two weeks ago, when Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex took their 5-month-old boy Sammy to Sutter Memorial Hospital to be treated for flu symptoms, but they didn’t like the care Sammy was getting.

For example, one day Anna asked why a nurse was giving her son antibiotics.

“I asked her, for what is that? And she’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m like, ‘you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby for what,’” Anna explained.

According to Anna, a doctor later said Sammy shouldn’t have been on the antibiotics.

Anna said Sammy suffers from a heart murmur and had been seeing a doctor at Sutter for regular treatment since he was born. After Sammy was treated for flu symptoms last week, doctors at Sutter admitted him to the pediatric ICU to monitor his condition. After a few days, Anna said doctors began talking about heart surgery.

“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna said.

Anna argued with doctors about getting a second opinion. Without a proper discharge, she finally took Sammy out of the hospital to get a second opinion at Kaiser Permanente.

“The police showed up there. They saw that the baby was fine,” Anna said. “They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms.”

Medical records from the doctor treating Sammy at Kaiser Permanente said the baby as clinically safe to go home with his parents. The doctor added, “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”

“So police saw the report from the doctors, said, ‘okay guys, you have a good day,’ and they walked away,” Anna said.

Read more at News 10

That SHOULD have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.   Many doctors are no longer recognizing the right of parents to disagree with their recommendations and/or seek a second opinion.  With god-like arrogance, they seek to intimidate, threaten and punish any patient that dares to question them, and the law allows them to do it.

Political Outcast continues:

Evidently the doctors and staff at Sutter were offended that Anna wanted to seek a second opinion because the day after the two hospital visits, police and Child Protective Services showed up at their house.  Alex met them outside the door and says that the police pushed him against the house and then smacked him down to the ground.  The police then opened the door without asking permission and entered the house.  Anna, who was frightened to death, turned her camera on to record what was happening.  She recorded one of the police officers telling her:

“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me ok?”

The policeman took Sammy from them and turned him over to the CPS agent.  They told the shocked and frightened parents that they had a report that Sammy had been severely neglected and that an investigation was being launched.

Alex and Anna have retained an attorney to help them sort the whole thing out.  Their attorney says that there are absolutely no signs of neglect and that the exact opposite is true.  The parents have never missed an appointment and they have the doctor’s records from Kaiser indicating that Sammy was okay to go home and that he was not in any danger.

Read more at Political Outcast

Even though the baby shows no signs of neglect and the parents have not been charged with any crime, CPS forced them to agree to restrictions on their parental rights in order to regain custody.   They have lost their right to disagree with the doctors over their son’s treatment, and must allow  intrusive “follow up” visits into their home.  ”Follow up” for what?  Further proof that the parents have done nothing wrong?  These parents are being treated as if they are guilty until proven innocent!

News 10 reports:

Five-month-old Sammy, who was removed from his parents’ custody by Sacramento County Child Protective Services last week, will be transported to Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, a Sacramento County judge ruled Monday. The baby has been in protective custody at Sutter Memorial Hospital.

The Nikolayevs have since been fighting to get their baby back and talking with local and international media to explain their case.

The court also ruled Monday the parents must following all medical advice from now on, including not taking their child from Stanford without proper discharge.

A county social worker will make regular house visits to check on Sammy once he is returned home.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Paul Seave said he believed all of the attorneys involved worked in the best interest of Sammy.

Read more at News 10

The “best interest of Sammy” was to be left with his parents the minute the cops saw he was in no danger, investigate the first hospital’s false reports to CPS, and investigate CPS’s unlawful abuses of power to harass and tear apart an innocent family!

ParentalRights.org explains why the Parental Rights Amendment is desperately needed:

Traditionally, the Supreme Court has recognized the “fundamental liberty interest of natural parents in the care, custody, and management of their child,” found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s “Due Process” clause. Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982) This protection, however, has been lost on Sacramento CPS. It is also being weakened through judicial erosion in the courts.

Passage of the Parental Rights Amendment will provide parents an explicit constitutional protection; otherwise, they’ll have to rely on the courts, hoping they will continue to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment as they traditionally have (but increasingly no longer do). And the PRA will allow organizations like CPS to know exactly what the rules are that they must follow.

“The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their child is a fundamental right. Neither the United States nor any State shall infringe this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.”

These two sentences would make clear that CPS cannot take a child away unless it is prepared to prove that the child was in danger caused by abuse or neglect. In this case, it would increase the chances that common sense would prevail and baby Sammy would have gotten to stay home safe and sound with his mom and dad.

Read more at ParentalRights.org

Imagine how many more incidents like this we are likely to see with a government takeover of health care!

Confiscating the baby: Obamacare and Parental Rights

Calif. Parents Whose Baby Boy Was ‘Snatched’ by Police Tell Their Unbelievable Story; Lawsuit ‘Absolutely’ Forthcoming

Couple calls for CPS reforms after reuniting with baby

The Child: America’s Battle for the Next Generation

MSNBC Host: Kids Don’t Belong To Their Parents, They ‘Belong To Their Communities’

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

DOJ: Children Do Not Need – and Have No Right to – Mothers or Fathers

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Who will raise kids: Mom, Dad or state?

Earlier this week, an irate mom tweeted a photo her child had taken in class, in which the teacher openly mocked Fox News as an example of “media bias”:

The teacher was trying to explain what media bias looks like. Fox News was the only media example she used (because no other media outlets are biased, dontcha know?). FYI, snarky Wonka memes are an example of TEACHER bias, not media bias.

This is so typical. I remember from my “Critical Thinking” class in college, I could tell you exactly how the textbook authors and teachers voted by the end of the class. Their bias was that obvious.    Of course, you expect that now in universities, but it’s already seeped down to grades K-12.

In Wisconsin, a crossword puzzle assigned to 8th graders told students that “conservative” meant “restricting personal freedoms“:

A mother at a Wisconsin public school said her daughter’s eighth grade class was assigned a worksheet with some eyebrow-raising definitions for “conservatism” and “liberalism.”

Conservatism, it stated in part, believes in “preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms” while liberalism is for “equality and personal freedom for everyone.”

“This is indoctrination,” Tamra Varebrook, a Republican activist in Racine, Wis., told TheBlaze on Thursday after her 13-year-old daughter showed her the crossword-style vocabulary sheet from Union Grove Elementary School earlier this week.

Read more at The Blaze

In New York, students were asked to write an essay from the Nazi perspective of “Why Jews Are Evil”:

An unnamed English teacher at Albany High School who wanted to “challenge” his/her students to “formulate a persuasive argument” tasked them with writing an essay about why “Jews are evil,” as if they were trying to convince a Nazi official of their loyalty. One third of the class refused, and the principal has apologized while insisting that there wasn’t any “malice or intent to cause any insensitivities to our families of Jewish faith.”

Read more at New York Magazine

Only one-third of the class refused.  That means, even with the example of principled resistance before them, two-thirds of the class went along with it!

In Florida, a father was stunned to discover this note written in crayon in his son’s handwriting:

The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child’s scrawl.

“I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.”

They’re the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution.

Harvey’s son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in Jacksonville, Fla. Back in January, a local attorney came in to teach the students about the Bill of Rights. But after the attorney left, fourth-grade teacher Cheryl Sabb dictated the sentence to part of the class and had them copy it down, he said.

Read more at The Blaze

If you think these are isolated incidents that would never happen at your child’s school, think again.  These are just the more blatantly obvious ones that happened to get caught.   The real indoctrination happens far more subtly, through half-truths and omissions, false assumptions, stories that manipulate the emotions and pressure to agree with the teacher and follow the crowd.  Day after day, year after year, they slowly break down the child’s resistance to their view of the world.

School Tells Students, Americans Don’t Have Right to Bear Arms

CSCOPE: Exposing The New Marxist Public School Curriculum

America’s School Children Being Indoctrinated With Marxism

Progressive-Communist Teachers Indoctrinate Children To Become Marxist

Public Education: Progressive Indoctrination Camps

Stalin-style U.S. public education

New Book Exposes the Effort to Introduce Radical Political Philosophy into K-12 Classrooms

Third Graders Want to Tax “Greedy” Rich, Marybeth Hicks Says Don’t Let Your Kids Drink The Marxist Koolaid

Progressive-Communist Teachers Indoctrinate Children To Become Marxist

Melissa Harris-Perry: All Your Kids Belong to Us (Not the Parents)

View on YouTube

I’ve seen the village, and I don’t want it raising my kids!

In a scripted MSNBC promo, Melissa Harris-Perry made the following statement:

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had a private notion of children, your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children.  So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Got that?  You kid doesn’t belong to you.  He/she belongs to the “collective” – meaning, the state.

Ironically, this is the same woman who calls unborn babies “things that turn into humans.”

How do I put this politely?  Stay the **** way from my kids!

Erick Erickson observes at Red State:

So kids belong to whole communities? Didn’t we fight a war back in the 1800s to prove that people weren’t owned by the state or anyone else, but were, in fact, people? Seriously?

But take that out of it. This is amazingly stupid commentary. All of us who own property (real property, not children) pay property taxes to fund a public education system to educate our children. We have democratically elected school boards to make the decisions on how tocollectively educate our kids to common, state approved standards.

It is failing spectacularly. And I suspect that the tangible efforts to improve it, from neutering teachers unions to giving parents choices in where to send their children, are opposed by Melissa Harris-Perry.

I never thought I’d see the day when self-styled progressives advocated the state owning the people.

Read more at Red State

Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters correctly points out that this is actually Maoist philosophy she’s spewing:

[T]he notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry “Lean Forward” spot contains a reference to a “great leap forward,” which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.

Read more at Newsbusters

The Five on Fox made some great points about this collectivist mentality while discussing this around the table:

View on YouTube

Sarah Palin tweeted a few ingenious responses to this:

Love it! After having spent 22 hours of my life in labor, I heartily agree!

After the justifiable outrage and backlash, Harris-Perry is trying to walk back her statements and blame the views for misunderstanding her.   Nice try.   This is typical for the Left.  They float a trial balloon and then pretend it was all an innocent misunderstanding when they get called for dropping their mask. The mask goes back up, but the ugliness behind it doesn’t go away. They work by desensitizing people over time, so that what sounds outrageous now will actually start to sound reasonable a few years from now. I don’t buy her “backpedaling” for a second.

Sign the petition to adopt the only Constitutional Amendment that will protect children from this kind of power grab – the Parental Rights Amendment!

The Child: America’s Battle for the Next Generation

Sarah Palin: It’s unflippingbelievable that MSNBC thinks your kids don’t belong to you

‘Is an unborn child owned by the collective?’: Greg Gutfeld, ‘The Five’ blast MSNBC’s collectivist Borg

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

DOJ: Children Do Not Need – and Have No Right to – Mothers or Fathers

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Who will raise kids: Mom, Dad or state?

 A young girl taking this pill without medical supervision could bleed to death or cause irreparable damage to her reproductive system.  This has NOTHING to do with protecting women and children.  It has everything to do with defending abortion in every circumstance, no matter how unreasonable, dangerous and destructive to the young  mother (much less her child).

Steven Ertelt reports at Life News:

A federal judge has ordered the federal government to make the morning after pill available for sale to teenagers nationwide.

Judge Edward Korman, a federal judge based in New York City, heard arguments in a case filed by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights over whether the FDA should have ultimately allowed teens to buy the Plan B drug without a doctor’s order. The pro-abortion group says such drugs are being held to a different standard than other drugs and that decisions are not based on science, but on politics.

The lawsuit was filed prior to the decision by the Obama administration in December 2011 to not allow sale of the morning after pill to teens.

Read more at Life News

Parents, doctors, and pro-life citizens are outraged, warning that this will put young girls at risk:

“There is a real danger that Plan B may be given to young girls, under coercion or without their consent. The involvement of parents and medical professionals act as a safeguard for these young girls. However, today’s ruling removes these commonsense protections,” concluded Higgins.

Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest noted that the business interests of Big Abortion were again at play as news broke of a federal judge allowing the so-called “morning after” pill to be sold to girls 16 and younger over the counter.

“This decision allows the abortion industry to gamble with young girls’ health in distributing a life-ending drug, with no real understanding of the long-term implications on their bodies,” said Dr. Yoest. “Equally troubling, this allows young girls pressured into sex or even abused by adults to be manipulated into taking pills that cover up what is a criminal act.”

“Young girls need medical supervision in taking such a potent and potentially life-ending drug,” said Dr. Yoest. “The implications for informed consent — and the long-term health impact on women of all ages — are deeply troubling.”

Read more at Life News

I pray that no young girls end up dying from this drug before this ruling is overturned.

Judge Edward Korman Orders ‘Morning-After’ Pill to Be Sold to 11-Year-Old Girls Over the Counter

Plan B Ruling Disregards Serious Health Concerns

U.N. Group Calls for Abortion as Human Right for 10-Year-Olds, Decriminalization of Prostitution

Common Core is a federal attempt to nationalize curriculum.  We MUST oppose this, from every school board!

Americans For Prosperity is sounding the alarm:

Critics of the Common Core State Standards had our fears confirmed on Monday when Education Week reported that the Department of Education will oversee the assessment test design for the new national standards. This is no April Fool’s joke: Washington will soon be directly regulating what America’s schoolchildren learn and on what they are tested. This massive expansion of federal power is concerning considering the federal government’s failed history of intervening in public education.

As I recently explained in AFP Foundation’s school choice policy report, the federal government has had its meddling hands in America’s public schools for decades. From the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to No Child Left Behind today, Congress has provided Title I federal funding to schools with low-income student bodies for the past half-century. But, this money is by no means free. As is often the case with federal funds, Title I comes with strings attached – which explains how Washington has been such a major player in American education despite the fact that public schools are function of the states.

[...]  After decades of failed federal intervention in America’s public schools, Common Core’s similar approach of centrally planning public schools has worried education reformers since the initiative was launched in 2009. For years, proponents of the standards have tried to soothe these fears by emphasizing that they are not administered by the federal government. Common Core’s official website, for example, downplays the protests by claiming “[t]he federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation.”

Perhaps this claim could hold water four years ago, but today it’s evident that Common Core is nothing more than a federal ruse to exert even greater control over America’s classrooms.  [...]

[I]t looks like Common Core is poised to repeat and amplify the federal government’s failed educational interventions by giving the central government even greater control of what American schoolchildren are learning. If the success of school choice has taught  us anything, it’s that education is most effective when controlled by actors on the local level, like teachers with freedom in how to teacher their students at charter schools, or parents with options of where to send their child to school through opportunity scholarships. Choice from the bottom, not force from the top, leads to effective learning.

Read more at AFP

Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available

Six Reasons Why Conservatives Should Object to the Common Core

‘Common Core’ Threatens Homeschooling Freedom

Feds Launch Intrusive New ‘Common Core’ Student Tracking Database – Time To Opt Out!

‘Common Core’ Banishes Literature, Replaces With Government Propaganda

CSCOPE: Exposing The New Marxist Public School Curriculum

Obama Takes Over Public Schools With ‘ObamaCore’ Curriculum

Rotten to the Core: Reader feedback from the frontlines

Rotten to the Core, Part 1: Obama’s War on Academic Standards

Rotten to the Core, Part 2: Readin’, writin’ and deconstructionism

Rotten to the Core, Part 3: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt

Rotten to the Core, Part 4: The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database

Support School Choice!

Plain meaning: if government militias get to carry arms, so do the citizens!

This is one of the reasons why it is an incredibly dangerous conflict of interest for the government to be shaping the hearts and minds of future voters.  Clearly, the Left wants the next generation of Americans to believe that they have no unalienable right to self-defense, from the government or anyone else.   They start by indoctrinating the young.

The Left knows it’s better to apologize after the fact than ask for permission. The seeds of deception have already been planted in these kids’ minds. They’ll let the outrage settle down, and then try again. This is why parents should have the choice to send their children to a school that isn’t out to indoctrinate their kids!

Todd Starnes reports at Fox News:

The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms.

“I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.”

Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’

“The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found a law regulating the private ownership of weapons unconstitutional.

The worksheet, published by Instructional Fair, goes on to say that the Second Amendment is not incorporated against the states.

“This means that the rights of this amendment are not extended to the individual citizens of the states,” the worksheet reads. “So a person has no right to complain about a Second Amendment violation by state laws.”

According to the document, the Second Amendment “only provides the right of a state to keep an armed National Guard.”

Boibeaux said he discovered the worksheet as he was going over his son’s homework assignments.

“I’m more than a little upset about this,” he told Fox News. “It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means.”

Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, called the lesson propaganda – that is “absolutely false.”

“In fact, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment ensures the individual the right to bear arms,” Staver told Fox News. “The progressive interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t give you the right to bear arms – that it’s a corporate right of the government – but that has been rejected by the Courts.”

Read more at Fox News

Gun Hysteria Leads To Harrassment Of Innocent Children In Public Schools

Schools’ ‘Zero Tolerance’ Weapons Policies Used To Bully Innocent Children

Brainwashing Kids About Guns

Brainwashing Kids About Guns: the Sequel

The Second Amendment: Much Ado about Firearms

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

Short answer: because if they acknowledge parents’ fundamental right to educate their children, they will have to recognize it for all parents here, as well.

Dell Tackett warns at Truth Observed:

Uwe and Hanna are home-school parents from Germany. But Germany doesn’t tolerate home schooling. Those who do are harassed, fined, imprisoned, and can lose custody of their children. Uwe and Hanna had such a religious and moral problem with what German government schools were teaching that they chose to school their children themselves, just as millions in this country do every day. But Germany’s laws, based upon a 1938 law signed by Adolph Hitler, believe that Germany’s children belong to the State from an educational standpoint. The law prohibits parents from educating their own children so that Germany can prevent a different worldview, or “society” as the law states, from arising.

After increased persecution from the German state, Uwe and Hanna fled to the United States. A Federal judge heard the arguments and granted them asylum, stating that Germany’s law and policy was “Nazi-esque”.

Immediately, the Obama Administration filed suit against the ruling and will bring the case before the United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Court on April 23. They are seeking to deport the Romeike family, which would send Uwe and Hanna back to Germany to face jail and possibly the loss of their children.

Why does the administration seek to do this?

Because it agrees with the German law. It doesn’t believe that parents have a right to educate their children. It is more in line with the National Education Association that homeschooling shouldn’t be allowed. It believes that the government can best educate “America’s children”. It doesn’t want another worldview taught in this country. It wants America’s children to have one worldview and one worldview only.

That is why they don’t want to grant asylum to the Romeike family. That would affirm parental rights—rights that have been fought for by so many courageous parents over the last 40 years in this country. Rights that I believe will take a serious hit if this case is won by the Administration.

Think of it this way: if the Administration wins this case, the legal statement and precedence will be set that parents do not have a fundamental right to educate their children and if the State were to ban home schooling, it would not be a violation of parental rights at all.

Read more at Truth Observed

A plea from abused homeschoolers

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

German Homeschooling Family Flees to US

Flashback: US grants home schooling German family political asylum

Crackdown on Homeschooling in the Near Future?

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

NO ONE is exempt from the new federal power-grab over education, which is designed to force all states and schools to teach a government-approved (Marxist?) curriculum.

William Estrada warns at HSLDA:

The CCSS removes education standards from the purview of state and local control to being controlled by unaccountable education policy experts sitting in a board room far removed from the parents, students, and teachers who are most critical to a child’s educational success.

Will the CCSS Affect Homeschools?

The CCSS specifically do not apply to private or homeschools, unless they receive government dollars (online charter school programs have no such protection). However, HSLDA has serious concerns with the rush to adopt the CCSS. HSLDA has fought national education standards for the past two decades. Why? National standards lead to national curriculum and national tests, and subsequent pressure on homeschool students to be taught from the same curricula.

The College Board—the entity that created the PSAT and SAT—has already indicated that its signature college entrance exam will be aligned with the CCSS. And many homeschoolers worry that colleges and universities may look askance at homeschool graduates who apply for admission if their highschool transcripts are not aligned with the CCSS.

Read more at HSLDA

Cheeky Bums answers homeschoolers’ FAQ’s:

The more that I read and study, the more convinced I am of the extreme detriment that the Common Core (CC) poses, not just to our children and our educational system – but to our country.

There are a few questions and comments that I have received this past week, some ranging from fear, and some from outright astonishment that I would even propose that CC presents a risk.  I want to, as succintly as possible, answer some of these…

The Common Core is being introduced into the PUBLIC school, so if I’m homeschooling, I don’t need to worry, right?

WRONG.  The CC is being adopted by 45 of the 50 states, including the District of Columbia, and it’s goal is NOT educational excellence.  One look at the standards and examples that we detailed in our previous post will undeniably confirm that.  The goal of Common Core is CONTROL.  The government is seeking to Nationalize educational standards, which goes COMPLETELY against that 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which outlines education as being within the scope of the State government, not the Federal government. If the States decide not to adopt CC, they will not be granted federal dollars, so although it’s not a mandate, it’s a mob version of law via monetary coercion.

Furthermore, homeschoolers will eventually need to meet the same educational standard and use CC approved/aligned curricula because the SATs, State tests and GEDs will all be modified to fit the new CC standards.

But homeschoolers traditionally test higher in academics, so I’m not worried.  My child will do fine on the tests. 

Although it’s true that homeschoolers traditionally, on average, test significantly higher than their publicly educated peers, this is not a safeguard given what is coming down the pipeline in terms of change.   Standardized testing is slated to be reformatted and rewritten, so we’re talking about a totally different measure of scope and sequence.  For example, math problem, as formed by the CC, are based on mental and verbal math; the emphasis is now on the process, not the answer.  Eventually, CC-educated students will be asked to verbally explain their method for solving the problem, regardless of whether or not the answer was correct.  If your homeschooled Senior can successfully complete complex mathematical algorithms but he is unable to explain how he got his answer, he will not pass.

Additionally, the literature requirements are changing significantly.  Non-fiction manuals are now required to compose 70% of your child’s “literature” by the time they graduate.   Here is a sample of the suggested reading within the CC:

• Petroski, Henry. “The Evolution of the Grocery Bag.”
• California Invasive Plant Council. Invasive Plant Inventory
• Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/U.S. Department of Energy. Recommended Levels of Insulation
• FedViews by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• Calishain, Tara, and Rael Dornfest. Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, 2nd Edition
• Fischetti, Mark. “Working Knowledge: Electronic Stability Control.”
• U.S. General Services Administration. Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management
• Gawande, Atul. “The Cost Conundrum: Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas.”

As enlightening as they may be, we’ll be tossing out “To Kill A Mockingbird”, “The Scarlet Letter” , Shakespeare and many other classics in lieu of “The Evolution Of The Grocery Bag”.  Therefore, as homeschoolers, if we haven’t been reading the above list with our Seniors, they have no hope of passing the SATs or GEDs, because we’re talking about two completely different lists of topics and material.

But as a homeschooler, I get to choose my own curriculum, so it’s my decision what my children will read and study. 

True, for now.  However, I was disheartened to see that many large homeschool publishers have already, or are planning to, rewrite their curriculum in order to meet CC standards.   For a very thorough and growing list, check out the curriculum updates on The Educational Freedom Coalition.

Read more FAQ at Cheeky Bums

And then they came for the Homeschoolers

Education Policy Expert on Threat of Common Core Standards to Homeschoolers

‘Common Core’ Banishes Literature, Replaces With Government Propaganda

Obama Takes Over Public Schools With ‘ObamaCore’ Curriculum

CSCOPE: Exposing The New Marxist Public School Curriculum

Feds Launch Intrusive New ‘Common Core’ Student Tracking Database – Time To Opt Out!

Creepy doesn’t begin to describe this.

Liz Klimas reports a The Blaze:

As part of the government’s initiative to institute Common Core standards for education, so comes a system that would mine information about students to establish best practices for effective teaching. But some think the technology that would conduct the mining crosses a line.

[...]  In the draft “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century” report released in February by the Department of Education is a section detailing how to measure such qualities in a student through Behavioral Task Performance.

“Behavioral task performance measures are the broad set of methods used to capture behaviors consistent with perseverance or lack thereof—and in many cases, associated emotional experiences, physical movements or facial expressions, physiological responses, and thoughts— that students do in response to a particular challenge,” the report states.

[...]  Understanding the emotions or physiological state of a student while they’re presented with a challenge, the report said, can be measured through “analysis of facial expressions, EEG brain wave patterns, skin conductance, heart rate variability, posture and eye- tracking.”

The report presents this figure showing a variety of sensors that could be used to determine the emotional state of a student while performing a certain task:

“Sensors provide constant, parallel streams of data and are used with data mining techniques and self-report measures to examine frustration, motivation/flow, confidence, boredom and fatigue,” the report states.

It presents MIT’s Mood Meter — a device that captures facial expression through a camera on a laptop while software analyses the mood — as an example of technology that can conduct these measurements.  [...]

A study in 1999 published by MIT researchers delved into the use of a posture-sensing chair to evaluate a student. The experiment using a chair with pressure sensors on the seat and back evaluated student interest in order to better learn how to improve the experience for students in a computer-learning situation.

But a camera, chair, mouse and wristband equipped with sensors to track different metrics isn’t not all. The report also highlights the value of FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imagery), which would reveal different areas of activity in the brain through scans.

Read more at The Blaze

Apparently they see classrooms full of children as guinea pigs who can be used for their Frankenexperiments – a captive audience that can’t leave once they find out that they have become the show.

Feds Launch Intrusive New ‘Common Core’ Student Tracking Database – Time To Opt Out!

Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available

Common Core is Not Just About Standards, it’s also about Data Mining

‘Common Core’ Banishes Literature, Replaces With Government Propaganda

Obama Takes Over Public Schools With ‘ObamaCore’ Curriculum

Data-Crazy Department of Education Throws Privacy Out the Window

Planned Parenthood endorses post-birth abortion

View on YouTube

You won’t believe your ears.  The casual way in which this woman dehumanizes infants into mere property that can be disposed of at will is vomit-inducing.

The Weekly Standard reports the shocking exchange:

Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.

“So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief,” said Rep. Jim Boyd. “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

“We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.

Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, “What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?”

“I do not have that information,” Snow replied. “I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information.”

Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, “You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you’re saying?”

Again, Snow replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

“I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?” asked Oliva.

“That’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that,” Snow said. “I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about this.”

Read more at the Weekly Standard

Advocates for infanticide correctly understand that the only difference between a baby inside and outside the womb is age and location. Both are living, biological human beings. So if “convenience” is the only standard for deciding who is “fit” to live, individuals outside the womb become equally disposable. Once you establish the precedent that government can deny one group of human beings the right to life, taking life from another group is relatively easy.

This is why the media is ignoring the trial of Kermit Gosnell, a late-term abortionist who would gruesomely snip the spinal cords of surviving babies with a pair of scissors.  They can’t allow people to realize where their agenda really leads.  They are willing to defend and justify the cruelest forms of murdering helpless infants in order to protect their false “choice” narrative.

Don’t forget that as an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted FOUR TIMES against legislation that would have provided medical care for exactly these babies, who survived a botched abortion only to be left to suffocate or dehydrate.

‘I’m Almost in Disbelief’: Planned Parenthood Rep Says Mother and Doctor Still Have Right to Decide Baby’s Fate If Born Alive And Breathing On A Table

Kermit Gosnell is No Different Than Other Abortion Doctors

Ethicists Argue For Acceptance Of ‘After-Birth Abortions‘ As Newborns ’Are Not Persons’

Obama Supports Infanticide

Journal defends its publication of an article advocating “after-birth abortion”

Baby denied medical treatment and handed back to his mother to die

Mark Steyn: Fourth-Trimester Abortion

Child screams “don’t touch me!” as TSA agent runs her hands all over the child’s body:

View on YouTube

Israel faces more terrorist threats every day than Americans will ever understand, and yet they have managed to keep terrorists off of their airplanes for decades without molesting kids, harassing old ladies or humiliating disabled veterans.  How?  Israel screens through behavioral profiling – an effective strategy our politically correct government refuses to use because they consider any form of profiling to be wrong (but sexually harassing children is OK)?

Todd Starnes reported on this incident in Missouri:

A Missouri couple is furious after the Transportation Security Administration detained their wheelchair-bound three-year-old daughter, took away her stuffed doll, and refused to allow them to videotape agents patting her down.

“They treated her like a criminal,” said Nathan Forck. “And by extension they were treating us as criminals.”

[...]  Forck and his wife Annie, along with their three children were heading to Disney World for a family vacation. Lucy, their three-year-old, has Spina bifida and is confined to a wheelchair.

The family managed to make it through the TSA checkpoint without any problems. But as they prepared to walk to their gate, a TSA agent pulled aside Lucy for additional screening measures.

“They specifically told me that they were singling her out for this special treatment because she’s in a wheelchair,” he told Fox News. “They are specifically singling out disabled people for this special scrutiny. It’s rather offensive to me as a father of a disabled child.”

The agent said they needed to pat down Lucy and swab her wheelchair – even though both had already gone through the checkpoint.

Forck’s wife started filming the entire episode – over the objections of the TSA agent.

“You can’t do touch my daughter unless I record it,” she can be heard telling the agent.

The agent replied by telling the parents “It is illegal to do that.”

“The problem is, I don’t allow anyone to touch my little daughter,” Annie Forck said.

The Forcks refused to stop filming and soon, the young family was surrounded by TSA agents – one specifically assigned to guard Lucy.

“It’s your worst nightmare,” Forck said. “It’s bad enough they are demanding they want to pat down my child and didn’t want me to videotape it.”

Read more at Fox News

The video is heart-wrenching for any parent to watch:

View on YouTube

Children depend on their parents to protect them from abuse, but what happens when the government is the abuser?   Do we just stand by and allow our children to be traumatized in the name of “security”?

In this video, screeners humiliate a 12-year-old in a wheelchair:

View on YouTube

That’s an experience she’s going to remember for the rest of her life.   How many more children have to be violated and harassed before parents and citizens finally say “enough”?

If they weren’t wearing a government badge, any person doing this to a child would be arrested for child abuse.   Just because the abuser represents the government doesn’t make it OK.   Parents, stand up and protect your kids!

TSA accuses weeping 4-year-old of carrying gun, labels girl security threat

Parents Decry Inappropriate TSA ‘Pat-Downs’ of Children

Clackamas mother outraged over TSA screening of 8-year-old at PDX

Government At Work: Groping Children Is Preferable to Perceived Profiling

TSA Horror Stories Prompt Passenger Revolt

TSA hasn’t caught a terrorist in almost a decade. Time to disband it

Sen. Rand Paul Detained By TSA For Refusing Instrusive Pat-Down

TSA defends removing adult’s diaper for pat down

‘I’m angry this time’: Bladder cancer survivor left covered in his own urine AGAIN after TSA worker manhandled him

TSA screeners confiscate pregnant woman’s insulin

From our nation’s founding until the Supreme Court ruling on Engel vs. Vitale in 1962, school children across the country began their day with a prayer like this:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.”

How shockingly “offensive” to ask God to bless us, huh?

Until 1963, students could voluntarily choose an elective such as “New Testament Survey,” which studied the most influential book in history (especially Western Civilization).   Teachers could read from the Bible in a historical context, and teach children to recite “The Lord’s Prayer” (seeing as it’s the most well-known poem in the world).

But now, no more.  American school children have no idea of where common cultural references such as “David vs. Goliath,” “The Golden Rule” or “going the extra mile” come from.   The have no frame of reference for understanding why the Reformation was such a pivotal point in European history, how Henry VIII’s break away from Rome was so significant, and the reason why the Puritans and Separatists were so intent on escaping to the New World.   Children today aren’t taught where Thomas Jefferson got the phrase “Nature’s God” for the Declaration of Independence, or why our founders built our nation on the idea that unalienable rights come from our Creator.

They have no idea of an absolute moral standard – a Natural Law – which no man, woman, king or president is above.

And that’s exactly how tyrants want it.  If there is no recognized authority above the state, the state reigns supreme in people’s lives, and can do as it pleases with no accountability.

Pope Francis witnessed this first-hand in Argentina, and he offered this warning:

In a 2011 book,  Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, the new Pope Francis, stated that parents have a right to raise their children in accordance with their religious beliefs and that sometimes when the government intervenes to deprive young people of that religious element, it can produce terrible consequences, including “cases like Nazism” whereby many students were indoctrinated with views alien to those espoused their parents.

The book, in Spanish, is entitled Sobre El Cielo Y La Tierra (On Heaven and Earth), by Jorge Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, the latter an Argentinan rabbi. The book is in interview-style and Skorka asks the cardinal a variety of questions throughout 29 chapters.

In Chapter 18, “Sobre la educacion” (On Education), the future Pope Francis says, “In the Bible, God presents himself as a teacher. ‘Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms,’ it says.  A believer is obliged to raise his children. Every man and every woman has a right to educate their children in their religious values.”

“When a government deprives children of this formation, it can lead to cases like Nazism, whereby children were indoctrinated with values opposite to those of their parents. Totalitarianism tends to take over education so it can use the water for its own mill,” said then-Cardinal Bergogolio.

Read more at CNS News

Why Christians Should Care About School Choice

IndoctriNation: A Powerful Film for Christian Parents

Why is the Church Silent on Education?

School Forces Child to Remove ‘God’ From Veteran’s Day Poem: ‘Separation of Church & State’

Calif. Teacher Punishes Students for Saying ‘God Bless You’

Second-grader suspended over drawing of Jesus

Judge rules against student’s religious expression

ACLU suit forces NJ students to cover, avoid religious symbols by using side door to auditorium

God & Country Banned in Public Schools?

Canada Violates Religious Liberty, Forces Private Catholic Schools To Teach Moral Relativism

Here we go…more bullying of innocent children by the paranoid, overly-sensitive “politically correct” crowd.

ABC 15 reports:

BALTIMORE – A 7-year-old Maryland boy has been suspended from school after biting his breakfast pastry into a shape that his teacher thought looked like a gun.

Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, said he was trying to nibble his strawberry Pop Tart into a mountain.

“It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn’t,” Josh said. “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda.”

But when his teacher saw what he had done, the boy says she got “pretty mad” and he knew he was “in big trouble.”

Josh’s dad was called by the school and informed that his son had been suspended for two days.

Read more at ABC 15

The sight of a pastry in the shape of a gun has been deemed so traumatic, the school is offering counseling to any students whose irrational fear of pop tarts might have been triggered.

Doug Powers writes at Michelle Malkin:

A Baltimore area elementary school recently suspended a seven year old boy for chewing a breakfast pastry into a shape resembling a gun. There also seems to be some dispute over whether the boy said “bang bang” after doing so (some also claim there might have been a second Pop-Tarter on the grassy knoll).

For any students who were traumatized by the frightening toaster strudel ordeal, counseling is available:

The school sent home a letter to parents saying, “During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one was harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.”

Parents should talk to their children if they’re troubled by the incident, the school said, and the school counselor will be available for any student who needs to talk.

It’s been pointed out that because the Pop Tart had a filling, the pastry weapon was likely considered to be loaded — a much more egregious zero-tolerance violation indeed — hence the suspension.

The letter sent to the parents of students is here. The educators will now undoubtedly insist that any Pop Tarts consumed on school property undergo a mandatory 24-hour cooling off period after coming out of the toaster.

Read more at Michelle Malkin

Pundit and Pundette wonders why more conservatives aren’t pulling their kids out of government schools that are inflicting this kind of abuse and indoctrination on their children:

Creating irrational fears in children is abusive. Also damaging to young souls and minds is the institutionalized squelching of the imagination and the subverting of rationality (kids know that gun-shaped Pop Tarts can’t hurt them), both evident in the Pop Tart incident. One wonders if the cogs in this machine ever speculate on the real purpose behind bureaucratic promotion of absurd, arbitrary rules, baseless fears, and mental paralysis. Hint: In what kind of society is a cowering populace a necessity?

[...]  But what about conservative parents? I wondered yesterday, via Twitter, why more of them don’t homeschool, and I got some interesting responses, including a couple of Tweets to the effect of, “Because we’re working!” Surely no one imagines that only affluent families homeschool their children. It’s just not the case.

I’m guessing that, though conservatives deplore this story and others like it, they’re still pretty satisfied with their own public schools, the defects of which aren’t great enough, in their view, to warrant pulling the kids out and taking personal charge of their education. Homeschooling can mean a huge lifestyle change, and it’s a lot of work. If the easy,* “free,” default way of doing things ain’t broke, why fix it?

But I think the reelection of President Obama proved beyond a doubt that our education system is very badly broken. From a November 2012 post:

David Gelernter has a partial explanation for the degradation of the electorate. It’s the schools, stupid:

. . . you can’t graduate class after class after class of left-indoctrinated ignoramuses without paying the price. Last night was a downpayment.

The switch to homeschooling can be a daunting prospect, especially for two-income households. But the benefits it bestows on the family make it an educational option worth serious consideration, even if you “can’t afford it” or find it unacceptably uncool. I for one am grateful that Big Brother still allows it.

Read more at Pundit and Pundette

In the light of the spate of school shootings over the past decade, school staff have justified cause to raise alarm over REAL guns brought onto school grounds without permission.   Instead of dealing with the threat of crazed gunmen, however, they seem content to merely punish those who heroically take them down:

A 16-year-old student from Fort Myers, Fla., was suspended for three days after he wrestled a loaded gun away from another student on the school bus.

The Cypress Lake High School student grappled a loaded .22-caliber RG-14 revolver away from the 15-year-old suspect on the ride home Tuesday.

Witnesses say the suspect, a football player, aimed the weapon point-blank at a teammate and threatened to shoot him.

“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the student who wrestled the gun away and who requested to be unidentified.

“No doubt he was going to shoot him point-blank,” he added.

According to Fox4Now.com, the student was suspended for his role in an “incident” in which a weapon was present and given an “emergency suspension.”

“It’s dumb,” he said. “How they going to suspend me for doing the right thing?”

Read more at the Washington Times

But don’t worry.  The security team that can’t discern between a gunman and hero will be sure to protect you from cupcakes featuring plastic army men.  Wouldn’t want you to suffer PTSD, or anything.

High School Student Disarms Gunman, Gets Suspended 

Tutorial: How to tell the difference between a Glock and a half-eaten Pop Tart

Schools’ ‘Zero Tolerance’ Weapons Policies Used To Bully Innocent Children

Brainwashing Kids About Guns

Brainwashing Kids About Guns: the Sequel

Michigan Schools Shut Down b/c Former Student, Now Working For Air Force, Entered School Wearing His Work Camo

Canadian Man Arrested, Strip Searched After 4-Year-Old Daughter Draws Picture Of Gun At School

This is What Guns Were Made For

The Second Amendment: Much Ado about Firearms

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

What is this, the Soviet Union?   Neighbors narking you out to the cops because they don’t like a photo you posted?

Todd Starnes reports at Fox News Radio:

New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

“Someone called family services about the photo,” said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. “It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids.”

Moore was not arrested or charged.   [...]

Moore, of Carneys Point, is a certified firearms instructor for the National Rifle Association, an NRA range safety officer and a New Jersey hunter education instructor.

He recently posted a photograph of his son wearing camouflage and holding his new .22 rifle. The child has a New Jersey hunting license and recently passed the state’s hunter safety course.

“If you look at the picture, his finger isn’t even on the trigger – which is proper,” Nappen told Fox News. “If half of Hollywood could follow that rule we’d be thankful.”

Brown said their role is not to go out and search Facebook for photos of children holding weapons.

“In general our role is to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect,” she said.

The family’s trouble started Saturday night when Moore received an urgent text message from his wife. The Carneys Point Police Dept. and the New Jersey Dept. of Children and Families had raided their home.

Moore immediately called Nappen and rushed home to find officers demanding to check his guns and his gun safe.

Instead, he handed the cell phone to one of the officers – so they could speak with Nappen.

“If you have a warrant, you’re coming in,” Nappen told the officers. “If you don’t, then you’re not. That’s what privacy is all about.”

With his attorney on speaker phone, Moore instructed the officers to leave his home.

“I was told I was being unreasonable and that I was acting suspicious because I wouldn’t open my safe,” Moore wrote on the Delaware Open Carry website. “They told me they were going to get a search warrant. I told them to go ahead.”

Moore took this photo of police outside his home.

Nappen told Fox News the police wanted to inventory his firearms.

“”We said no way, it’s not happening,” he said. “This is a guy who is completely credentialed and his son is also credentialed.”

The attorney said police eventually left and never returned.

[...]  “To make someone go through this because he posted a picture of his son with a .22 rifle on his Facebook page is pretty outrageous,” he said. “Does that mean that anyone who posts a picture like that has to consent to a home inspection and a gun inspection? I don’t think so.”

Read more at Fox News Radio

‘I Was Seriously Mad About It’: 11-Year-Old Behind Facebook Gun Photo Speaks Out

Know Your Rights: Citizens Journalists Show How Not To Comply With Unconstitutional Detention, Searches or Questioning

New York state offers $500 reward for reporting gun owners

Schools’ ‘Zero Tolerance’ Weapons Policies Used To Bully Innocent Children

Innocent Americans Defend Themselves With Guns: The Stories You’re Never Told

12-Year-Old Girl Shoots Home Intruder

14-Year-Old Boy Shoots Armed Intruder, Saves Younger Siblings

Teach Your Kids to Shoot

As a parent, it is chilling to see how much government bureaucrats presumptiously claim the right to intrude into our children’s lives.   Since the moment the federal government took control of education (thanks, Jimmy Carter!), it has been progressively demanding more and more control over the system, the content, and even the most personal matters of the students themselves.

Children are the future.  If the state gains absolute control over the hearts, minds and choices of future voters and citizens, they will learn look to the state to be their provider, caregiver, and master.    It’s already happening.    If we don’t stop them, we will wake up one day to discover that our children have become wards of the state, with parents having little – if any – input.

Michelle Malkin explains the latest threat:

While many Americans worry about government drones in the sky spying on our private lives, Washington meddlers are already on the ground and in our schools gathering intimate data on children and families.

Say goodbye to your children’s privacy. Say hello to an unprecedented nationwide student tracking system, whose data will apparently be sold by government officials to the highest bidders. It’s yet another encroachment of centralized education bureaucrats on local control and parental rights under the banner of “Common Core.”

As the American Principles Project, a conservative education think tank, reported last year, Common Core’s technological project is “merely one part of a much broader plan by the federal government to track individuals from birth through their participation in the workforce.” The 2009 porkulus package included a “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” to bribe states into constructing “longitudinal data systems (LDS) to collect data on public-school students.”

These systems will aggregate massive amounts of personal data — health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status and even blood types and homework completion. The data will be available to a wide variety of public agencies. And despite federal student-privacy protections guaranteed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Obama administration is paving the way for private entities to buy their way into the data boondoggle. Even more alarming, the U.S. Department of Education is encouraging a radical push from aggregate-level data-gathering to invasive individual student-level data collection.

[...]  Home-schoolers and religious families that reject traditional government education would be tracked. Original NEDM data points included hair color, eye color, weight, blood types and even dental status.

How exactly does amassing and selling such personal data improve educational outcomes? It doesn’t. This, at its core, is the central fraud of Washington’s top-down nationalized curricular scheme. The Bill Gates-endorsed Common Core “standards” are a phony pretext for big-government expansion. The dazzling allure of “21st-century technology” masks the privacy-undermining agenda of nosy bureaucratic drones allergic to transparency, accountability and parental autonomy. Individual student privacy is sacrificed at the collective “For the Children” altar.

Fed Ed is not about excellence or academic achievement. It’s about control, control and more control.

Read more at Michelle Malkin

However, there is currently a way for parents to opt out:

The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: CLICK HERE.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. Echoing families across the city, Big Apple public advocate Bill de Blasio blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials: “I don’t want my kids’ privacy bought and sold like this.” On Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 — the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act— to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of a student’s parent or guardian.

[...]   Research fellow Joy Pullmann at The Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

The DOE report exposes the big lie that Common Core is about raising academic standards by revealing its progressive designs to measure and track children’s “competencies” in “recognizing bias in sources,” “flexibility,” “cultural awareness and competence,” “appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “perspective taking, trust (and) service orientation.”

That’s right. School districts and state governments are pimping out highly personal data on children’s feelings, beliefs, “biases” and “flexibility” instead of doing their own jobs imparting knowledge – or minding their own business. And yes, Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushcontinue to falsely defend the centralized Common Core regime as locally driven and non-coercive, while ignoring the database system’s circumvention of federal student privacy laws.

Why? Edu-tech nosy-bodies are using the Common Core assessment boondoggle as a Trojan horse to collect and crunch massive amounts of personal student data for their own social justice or moneymaking ends.

Read more at Michelle Malkin

Don’t waste any time.  OPT OUT NOW!

Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available

Common Core is Not Just About Standards, it’s also about Data Mining

‘Common Core’ Banishes Literature, Replaces With Government Propaganda

Obama Takes Over Public Schools With ‘ObamaCore’ Curriculum

Ravitch: Why I oppose Common Core standards

Rotten to the Core: Reader feedback from the frontlines

Rotten to the Core, Part 1: Obama’s War on Academic Standards

Rotten to the Core, Part 2: Readin’, writin’ and deconstructionism

Rotten to the Core, Part 3: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt

Rotten to the Core, Part 4: The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database

Data-Crazy Department of Education Throws Privacy Out the Window