Stop Common Core Rally info – Downtown Baton Rouge – September 28, 2013 (10-12)

Posted on September 23, 2013
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Stop Common Core Coalition of Louisiana
PLACE: Dept. of Education BESE, 1201 N Third St., Baton Rouge LA
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 2013
TIME: 10:00am – 12:00pm

Concern(Ed) Parents Protecting the Dreams of their Childrenannounces a press conference and rally to bring awareness to all citizens of the insurmountable flaws of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI).  This Initiative of reforms includes untested standards, privacy issues created through data mining, unconstitutional mandates for adherence to a national curriculum and a standardized test Partnership for Assessment for College and Career Readiness (PARCC).
All are in direct violation of the rights of parents in the State of Louisiana.  According to theLouisiana Children’s Code Preamble: “Parents have the paramount right to raise their children in accordance with their own values and traditions; that parents should make the decisions regarding the educational, moral, ethical, and religious training of the child.” The CCSSI is educationally unsound offering a limited view of education as preparation for college and the workforce without regard for the creativity and curiosity that engages students and produces life-long learners and innovative thinkers. The national curriculum produced for CCSSI is set up for a national standardized test (PARCC) which cannot evaluate complex thought, avoid cultural bias, or measure non-verbal learning. Nationalized standards are no longer a measure of performance but mandate a proficiency level that does not represent the individual potential of every child.
Our message is clear. We are not misinformed. We know what the Common Core State Standard Initiative is, and we REJECT it. Therefore, we are demanding that Governor Jindal and the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education withdraw from the CCSI and its PARCC testing consortium.
The federal government and private organizations have imposed the Standards on the states. They have done so in a manner that denied the people and their elected legislators a meaningful chance to review the Standards and to consider the implications of participation in the Common Core Standards system, including assessments and data collection. The federal constitutional structure – a compound republic with a separation of powers – serves to protect our liberties and governance by the people. The Common Core Standards Initiative and Race to the Topmisused that structure by taking the people’s money and forcing their elected representatives to decide whether to compete for a chance to get that money back, and did so without respecting the states’ responsibility to put the issue to their people. We are now coming to terms with some of consequences of evading the constitutional structure. Those consequences include national standards that – contrary to the creators’ claim of academic rigor – are of inferior academic quality, that rest on a philosophy of education contrary to our founding, that undermine state autonomy and parental involvement, that intrude on student and family privacy, and that will impose enormous costs on state taxpayers.
The final chapter of this story, we believe, will be a rededication to the principle of government by the people. The American people are now awakening to the reality that their states have surrendered control to “experts,” who are delivering a product that falls profoundly short of its billing. State elected bodies now have the chance to reverse this. They have the chance to reassert the people’s right to self-determination. For the sake of our founding principles, they should do so. – (Controlling Education From the Top Why Common Core Is Bad for America – A Pioneer Institute and American Principles Project White Paper by Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins)
STOP COMMON CORE IN LOUISIANA is a coalition of concern parents working together to bring awareness to this Federal overreach called The Common Core Standards Initiative. We are committed in Standing for Educational Freedom and will work tirelessly to Keep Education Local.
FACEBOOK PAGES:
Parents and Educators against Common Core in Louisiana 
Catholic School Parents against Common Core in New Orleans
Stop Common Core in Louisiana
PARENTS AGAINST COMMON CORE (Houma/Gibson area)