Who are the Power Brokers behind the Common Core State Standards?

[n2doc]

By Dr. Rich Swier

Many parents, teachers, educators and concerned citizens do not know who are the “power brokers” behind Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It is important to understand who is pushing this initiative that is a federal government backed top down approach to public school education. United Opt Out National has compiled a comprehensive list of the key power brokers, nonprofit institutions and corporations behind CCSS. It is provided here for your edification.

Through the U.S. Department of Education designated Race to the Top initiative, grants and other monies are given to states that adopt RTTT which requires them to adopt CCSS, use new high stakes testing such as PARCC or SBAC, and requires these tests to be attached to teacher and school evaluations which in turn foster the agenda of corporate-run education policies. (See ALEC at the bottom for more.)

Achieve was granted the contract from U.S. Department of Education to develop and manage the Common Core State Standards initiative including curricular development and assessment. NGA and CCSSO also lead the development and implementation of CCSS)

ACHIEVE

Who they are? According to their website, “Created in 1996 by the nation’s governors and corporate leaders, Achieve is an independent, bipartisan, non-profit education reform organization based in Washington, DC that helps states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments and strengthen accountability so all students graduate ready for college, work and citizenship.”

Key players: Lou Gerstner, co-founder of Achieve (Former CEO of IBM) and Craig Barrett, Achieve Chair (former CEO of Intel Corp.)

Funders:

AT&T Foundation (ALEC)/The Battelle Foundation/Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation (ALEC)/The Boeing Company (ALEC)/Brookhill Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Chevron (ALEC)
The Cisco Foundation/DuPont (ALEC)
The GE Foundation (ALEC)
IBM Corporation (ALEC)/Intel Foundation (ALEC)
JP Morgan Chase Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
The Leona & Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
Lumina Foundation (ALEC)
MetLife Foundation
Microsoft
Nationwide (ALEC)
Noyce Foundation
The Prudential Foundation (ALEC)
Sandler Foundation
State Farm Insurance Companies (ALEC)
Travelers Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

ACHIEVE partners with Pearson for most of its testing and curricular materials for the PARCC.

more

http://drrichswier.com/2014/01/06/who-are-the-power-brokers-behind-the-common-core-state-standards/

[Sanity Claws]

1. What does ALEC in parentheses after Foundation names mean?

If it means that the foundations are part of ALEC, could you provide some proof of that? I am involved in the nonprofit sector and am very curious about the matter. Also, it makes me wonder whether their contributions to a politically active entity like ALEC would endanger their tax exempt status with the IRS.

[Squinch]

2. I knew about the web among Pearson and Teacher's College and testing and charter schools and

teacher evaluations, which is just a monopoly of educational trash that has taken over the system.

I suppose I should have assumed that ALEC was at the bottom of it all.

But my question remains: why would all these organization be making such a coordinated and concerted effort to destroy the educational system? Can they really be so willfully destructive to lives and nations simply because of greed? Am I missing something?

[snot]

3. Here's my theory, f.w.i.w.:

A combination of factors that vary with each organization involved, but that include:

Well-intentioned wrong-headedness;

A wishful preference to believe that education can be restored without raising taxes to either fund it or to reduce the poverty that's actually one if not the most challenging obstacles to educational success;

A ideological and/or selfish preference to channel funds toward private enterprises as a solution, rather than allow funds to be controlled by governments that remain at least slightly more answerable to the public at large; and last but not least,

The fact that "A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking." -- U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

[Squinch]

4. I think you are right about channeling funds toward the private sector,

but that is all being done by the very people who would profit from private education.

And the last one about the demands of the modern economic system: it seems so Big Brother, and it seems to require such a conspiracy of sociopaths, but it is looking more and more likely to me that that is actually a large part of the impetus behind this.

It is so disturbing to think that there are people who are so willing to consume their fellow humans. But I think you are right.

[snot]

5. I think/hope that last motivation is not consciously held by most of them --

but I've heard conservatives express a lot of things in private that they wouldn't say on the record.

And it doesn't have to be a big conspiracy, any more than I conspire with other DU'er's to promote progressive views. We just happen to share certain preferances, which we pursue individually and, sometimes, in consultation with one another.

The fact of so much common membership in ALEC clearly establishes, moreover, that they understand the power they gain through organized efforts.

[Squinch]

6. But the inter-workings of Pearson, Teacher's College, the teacher evaluation developments,

the Common Core devisers, and ALEC says it's more than just regular folk expressing their views.

For example, the head of Teacher's College is a major stockholder of Pearson, the company that does the testing that is a major part of the Teacher's College recommendations. The Pearson people are also the funders of the Stamford group that is devising the teacher evaluations, which are based largely on, wait for it, the results on the Pearson tests. Those links are all over this stuff. It's a web, but the same people are in it, and it is a very concerted and coordinated effort.

[warrant46]

7. +1