Common Core Student Testing Saleswoman Admits The Tests Are Anti American

[From article]
Kim Koerber, a former Pearson executive who now works as a sales consultant for National Geographic – another Gates Foundation-funded Common Core publisher – tells the Project Veritas undercover journalist that “conservative voters are afraid of everything,” and proceeds to say why Common Core is important in her view.
She explains that those behind Common Core and the new AP U.S. History framework have attempted to minimize the Constitution and remove Christianity from the core concepts, while they also stress the importance of teaching about Islam:
“The dead white guys did not create this country,” Koerber says. “They [presumably conservatives] want to talk about those dead white guys.”
Koerber continues that Common Core is necessary because “it needs to be come cohesion between the states.” She expresses frustration, however, that “Texas keeps screwing it up over and over again.”
“People who say they want to teach the Constitution, only want to teach the part of the Constitution that they like,” she tells the journalist, who then asks her about the Second Amendment.
“But yet they don’t want to teach all of it,” she replies. “Damn the Second Amendment.”
[. . .]
The Project Veritas journalist asks Koerber about the profits for textbook publishers with the Common Core reform.
KK: Anytime anybody changes something in a textbook its profitable for the textbook companies. So the textbooks have to change and the school district has to adopt the new ones, that’s profitable.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/21/exclusive-former-pearson-exec-reveals-anti-american-agenda-in-common-core-on-constitution-guns-christianity/

Exclusive: Former Pearson Exec Reveals Anti-American Agenda in Common Core
by DR. SUSAN BERRY

21 Jan 2016

Cambridge, MA Librarian Laments Excessive Testing of Third Graders

Local school officials suffer from two debilitating syndromes. One is the love of taxpayer funds. The other is obedience to authority and conformism. Only way to curb the education policies which continue to dumb down public school students is to eliminate the US Department of Education. An alternative is to elect and hire officials with spines, which is more difficult than the first solution. Do teacher unions play any role in these abuses?



http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20160119/NEWS/160116363

LETTER: Will this student testing in Cambridge really be harmless?
Posted Jan. 19, 2016 at 8:30 AM
To the editor:
--Susan Moynihan, librarian in Cambridge Public Schools

Cambridge, MA Teacher Laments Testing Mandates From Feds

Waste of taxpayer funds and misguided priorities extend to several federal bureaucracies, including but not limited to the US Department of Education. The same can be said about state and local bureaucracies. But the school committee has the final authority if they are able to assert their statutory power. All too often local officials yield to state and federal officials due to the desire to receive funds otherwise unavailable or withheld. Spines are seldom found among elected officials who focus on getting re-elected rather than doing what is best for students and taxpayers. Still no mention of the role teacher unions play in making school policy. Award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto, has some ideas in his book, Dumbing Us Down.
http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20151223/NEWS/151228310

LETTER: Where was the discussion on MCAS and PARCC?
Posted Dec. 23, 2015 at 8:42 AM
Updated at 8:43 AM
To the editor:
(Editor's note: This is an open letter to Cambridge School Committee members.)
Kathy Greeley, Erie Street

Cambridge, MA Teacher Opposes Misguided Priorities

Rose Levine with students

This teacher expresses a rational observation about imposing tests on local schools by government bureaucrats. There is no transparency who decided to limit the choices to two tests, and no option to eliminate them. Recall the scandal in Atlanta where administrators went to prison for altering test results to cover-up poor statistics. No mention of the role of teacher unions in this process. See e.g., award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto's book, Dumbing Us Down.

[From article]
it's all part of the same, failed attempt to measure what cannot be measured using tools that are inaccurate and crude. Schools have not always been this way. Schools need not continue to be this way.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20151226/NEWS/151228241/?Start=1

LETTER: Standardized testing is not educationally meaningful
By Rose Levine
Fifth-grade teacher, Graham & Parks School
Posted Dec. 26, 2015 at 8:15 AM
To the editor:
Cambridge Chronicle
Rose Levine, fifth-grade teacher, Graham & Parks School

In Terror War Muslims Permitted To Use Religious Tests. White House Prohibits Christians From Using Them

[From article]
[White House] recently scolded those who don’t want to admit “Syrian refugees” to the United States, saying there should not be a religious test. He had the temerity to suggest it was “un-American,” as if being American means abandoning national security to exchange our lives and future for the lives of some other group of folks, many of whom hate us.
In any case, for all of [The White House’s] faux passion and outrage about religious tests, he had nary a word to say about the religious test that is the core of Islam – the test put forth to non-Muslims before terror strikes, sparing those who can recite passages from the Quran before massacring those who cannot. The dead did not pass the religious test.
[White House] does not speak about the religious test put forth to Yazidis and Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East when jihadists show up in their town and at their door and in their homes and demand they convert to Islam. Or die. Because they failed the religious test.
[White House] does not speak about the religious test when “Palestinians” take to the streets of Israel and knife, or run over, or shoot Jews because they are Jews, with 23 murdered and 192 wounded in the most recent wave of attacks. It’s a war against Jews because they fail the test.
[. . .]
How dare he raise the idea of a religious test in the face of genocide sweeping across the Middle East, as individuals and families are wiped out because the religious test was put to them? How dare this man stand upon the world stage and utter a single word on a single matter with a fake air of authority when he is, among so many things (and none of them good), a hypocrite of epic proportions?
[. . .]
Islamic scripture is a doctrine of war, and anyone who is talking about other matters while circumventing this is a dangerous fool and has no business being in a position of power or having access to the bull horn.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/the_religious_test_hypocrisy.html

November 28, 2015
The 'religious test' hypocrisy
By Carol Brown

Muslim Terror Attack in Mali, One American Woman Killed After Religious Test

Anita Datar (insert) American Woman Killed In terror Attack in Mali

So is this a religious test? If Muslim terrorists can use one to decide who lives, why can't Americans use a religious test to accept or deny admission to the country?

[From article]

We have seen this before on several occasions in Kenya. In September 2013 at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, Muslims murdered people who couldn’t answer questions about Islam. In June 2014, Muslims murdered people who could not pass an Islam quiz. In November 2014, Muslims murdered 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses. In April 2015, Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” stormed Garissa University College, and only shot those who couldn’t recite Qur’an.

[. . .]

A senior security source said some of the hostages had been freed after being made to recite verses from the Koran. The French newspaper Le Monde quoted the Malian security ministry as saying at least three hostages had been killed.
[. . .]
The security source said as many as 10 gunmen had stormed the building, firing shots and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is great” in Arabic. The hotel’s head of security said two private security guards had been injured in the early stages of the attack, which began at 7 a.m. (0200 ET)….

http://pamelageller.com/2015/11/mali-muslims-screaming-allahu-akbar-take-hostages-free-those-who-can-recite-quran.html/

Mali: Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” take hostages, free those who can recite Qur’an
ByPAMELA GELLER

November 20, 2015

Google Researching Skin To Screen For Cancer

Google is making human skin as part of research into 'wristband that can detect cancer'
Scientists in the life sciences division of Google X laboratories in California needed to create arms that were as realistic as possible to test the technology. Dr Andrew Conrad said the system, which is still in the early stages of development, would detect cancer cells when they first appear by using nanoparticles that “search” the body for disease.

Columnist Objects to Skepticism

Standardized tests, i.e., Common Core, are not "settled established norms." Testing teachers is also relatively new. If Goodwin's thesis was true, Noam Chomsky would be on network news every day. He is still marginalized, while Kennedy family celebrities get national recognition for misguided policies. Does Goodwin mistake opposition for radicalism? Has conformity become the default position on all matters?

[From article]
Ideas that only recently were relegated to the fringes are now going mainstream. And policies that were settled, established norms are under vicious assault. Here’s the real shocker: The radicals are not limited to Occupy Wall Street and other anarchists demonstrating against cops, capitalism and all authority. Instead, respected public figures and government officials who would normally defend the establishment are leading the charge against it. [. . .] The San Jose Mercury News found that 87 percent of kindergartners at the wealthy Berkeley Rose School had vaccine exemptions because the parents believed in “more alternative health care,” according to a school spokesman. The school, where half-day kindergarten costs nearly $12,000 a year, says it offers “judgment-free” education. Children handwrite their own textbooks, learn to knit in first grade and, despite its proximity to Silicon Valley, the school features an anti-tech culture that emphasizes experience over facts. No kidding.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/18/radicalism-is-going-mainstream/

Radicalism is going mainstream
By Michael Goodwin
New York Post
April 18, 2015 | 11:04pm

Updated: Eleven Atlanta Educators Jailed For Test Cheating For Bonuses, Eight Sentenced To Prison

Posted April 2, 2015 6:22 PM ET; Last Updated April 14, 2015 9:13 PM ET


Former Deerwood Academy assistant principal Tabeeka Jordan, center, is led to a holding cell after a jury found her guilty in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial, Wednesday, April 1, 2015, in Atlanta. Jordan and 10 other former Atlanta Public Schools educators accused of participating in a test cheating conspiracy that drew nationwide attention were convicted Wednesday of racketeering charges. 

(AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kent D. Johnson, Pool)


[From article]

Eight former Atlanta public school educators were ordered on Tuesday to serve between one and seven years in prison for their convictions on racketeering charges in one of the nation's largest test-cheating scandals.
The lengthy prison sentences, unusual for educators, contrasted to the treatment of two defendants in the case also found guilty by a jury this month. Both accepted responsibility under a deal with prosecutors that spared them significant time behind bars.
[. . .]
"There were thousands of children that were harmed in this thing," Baxter said during a rancorous hearing.
"It’s like the sickest thing that's ever happened to this town," he later said of the scandal that raised national alarm about high-stakes testing.
[. . .]
Erasing wrong answers was part of the cheating by the educators under pressure to meet test targets, prosecutors said during a nearly six-month trial.
Student achievement helped the former principals, teachers and administrators to secure promotions and cash bonuses.
A Georgia grand jury in 2013 roiled the community by indicting 35 Atlanta educators, including former school Superintendent Beverly Hall, on conspiracy and other charges.
[. . .]
While cheating has been reported in 40 states and Washington, D.C., in recent years, educators do not usually serve prison time,

http://news.yahoo.com/pleas-mulled-former-atlanta-educators-test-cheating-scandal-120733406.html;_ylt=AwrBJR8ROi1VG0YAVUTQtDMD

Prison sentences for eight former Atlanta educators in test-cheating scandal
By David Beasley
April 14, 2015

* * *

[From article]
A group of former Atlanta educators convicted in a test cheating scandal were locked up in jail Thursday as they await sentences that could send them to prison for years.
In one of the nation's largest cheating scandals of its kind, the 11 defendants were convicted Wednesday of racketeering for their roles in a scheme to inflate students' scores on standardized exams.
They include teachers, a principal and other administrators, who were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta public school system. A 12th defendant, a teacher, was acquitted of all charges by the jury.
The racketeering charges carry up to 20 years in prison. The convicted former educators are set to be sentenced later this month.
"This is a huge story and absolutely the biggest development in American education law since forever," University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson said. "It has to send a message to educators here and broadly across the nation. Playing with student test scores is very, very dangerous business."
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/58447a404ff34413be536de642a38a99/former-atlanta-educators-jailed-test-cheating-scandal

Former Atlanta educators jailed in test cheating scandal
By KATE BRUMBACK
Apr. 2, 2015 12:21 PM EDT

Harvard University Professor Develops Ebola Test Costing Less Than $1

Jim Collins

Photo by: Courtesy Photo

[From article]
A Harvard researcher and his team have developed a prototype Ebola test that could detect the virus in 30 minutes and cost less than $1 to reproduce.
Jim Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, said he and his team created the test in 12 hours, using just $20 of materials.
“We’re keen to see if we can move the technology out into the field to address the (Ebola) crisis,” Collins said.
The test takes molecules inside a cell drawn from a saliva or blood sample and then drops them on a pocket-sized piece of paper that contains freeze-dried biosensors — molecular switches that are activated in the presence of molecules of the Ebola virus. If, after 30 minutes, the paper turns from yellow to purple, the sample is positive for Ebola.
Collins said the team still has to ensure a low false-positive rate with the test and make it more sensitive so that it would work even with a smaller amount of viral molecules before it will be ready to be field-tested.

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/2014/10/harvard_prof_develops_fast_cheap_prototype_ebola_test

Harvard prof develops fast, cheap prototype Ebola test
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
By: Marie Szaniszlo
Boston Herald

Breath Test Promising Way To Detect Illnesses

(Photo: KING)

[From article]
"I just blow the balloon, they can analyze, and come back with the answers for you," Patwardhan explained.
The machine is part of a new generation of diagnostic devices that promise to potentially sniff out all sorts of diseases, including various cancers, liver disease, kidney failure, diabetes, asthma and tuberculosis.
"Our blood goes through the lungs. Anything in the blood that is potentially volatile at body temperature, we can detect it in the breath. The limitation in the past has been because we didn't have the technology to be able to measure these things in breath because they're present in very small quantities," said Dr. Raed Dweik, Director of the Pulmonary Vascular Program at the Cleveland Clinic.
During one preliminary study at the Cleveland Clinic, a breath test was able to detect severe heart failure with one hundred percent accuracy.

http://www.king5.com/story/news/health/body/2014/10/27/breath-test-diagnoses-disease/18034531/

KING 5 HealthLink
10:05 a.m. PDT October 28, 2014

Rwanda Tests Americans Traveling to Rwanada

[From article]
Now American and Spanish visitors will have to fill out a questionnaire and report their medical condition for the first 21 days of their visit in Rwanda. This big “screw you” to the U.S. and Spain comes after a ridiculous mix-up in New Jersey this week where an elementary school required that its nurse monitor the health of two Rwandan students for 21 days.
The nurse at Howard Yocum Elementary School in Maple Shade, New Jersey, wrote a note to all parents saying her office would monitor the kids’ temperatures three times a day for three weeks, scaring the parents half to death that their kids would get Ebola from a couple of Rwandans. The parents of the Rwandan children then volunteered to keep the kids at home for 21 days.

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/health-culture/ebola-rwanda/

Rwanda Starts Testing American Visitors for Ebola
Hey, West: Not everyone in Africa has Ebola. In fact, most Africans are scared you'll give it to them
Author: Sarah Kaufman
Posted: 10/21/14 14:57 EDT

Common Core One Size Fits All, Good For Bill Gates

Billionaire Bill Gates

[From article]
He is talking about standardization. He is talking about a tidier assembly line. (But nobody ever said that democracy is supposed to be tidy. Dictatorship is tidy.)
Bill Gates brought a programmer’s sensibility to education. There is a maximally efficient way to design a piece of software. So let’s do that, and stop all this other nonsense. Bad plan, even with the best of intentions.
[. . .]
There seems to be a belief in magic. Outline impressive goals (“internationally benchmarked,” no less) in a technical, officious way, and every kid will automatically soar to high levels. But why would that happen? Teachers still have to teach, and students still have to learn the information, fact by fact. But our Education Establishment hates all those traditional practices. It’s so much simpler to proclaim that henceforth all children will be college- and career-ready. Presto! That was easy.
Bill Gates and Common Core are obsessed with arranging things in standardized patterns, coast to coast. So we must have standards that will somehow apply to everyone. Then we need identical curricula, and we’ll need identical tests.
[. . .]




If you want to let Bill Gates off the hook, say this: he trusted the wrong people and their bad ideas. The very same people who had dumbed down the schools were now being asked to create a reform program. Oh, really? How could that possibly work? Typically, these people were socialists. They wanted leveling, and they worked relentlessly to get it.
[. . .]
If Bill Gates had turned away from the Education Establishment and its dysfunctional ideas, maybe he could’ve worked a miracle. But the boss educators would never allow that. So they made a sweet deal. Gates would get a huge, tidy market for his wares. The education professors would get more dictatorial power.
[. . .]
All that Common Core was going to do was give the same people more power so no one could get out from under their thumbs.
[. . .]
But never mind how much Gates makes. We wouldn't mind if the children were being well-educated. But he was in cahoots with people who had never been primarily interested in making children well-educated. The goal, ever since the time of John Dewey, was to make children cooperative, largely incapable of independent thought, and easy to govern.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/common_core_anatomy_of_a_failure.html

March 30, 2014
Common Core: Anatomy of a Failure
By Bruce Deitrick Price

New Prostate Cancer Test Promising

[From article]
Lead scientist Dr Hayley Whitaker, from Cambridge University, said: ‘This is early research, but if clinical trials confirm our results then it could help clinicians to tell which patients have a more aggressive tumour and need proportionally aggressive treatment, while sparing patients with low grade tumours unnecessary radiotherapy or surgery.
[. . .]
The study, conducted in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is published in the journal Oncogene.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2509452/Major-prostate-cancer-breakthrough-thanks-simple-test-shows-man-aggressive-form-disease.html

Major prostate cancer breakthrough thanks to simple test which shows if a man has the aggressive form of the disease
There are higher levels of the protein NAALADL2 in aggressive tumours
Finding means doctors can identify those tumours that are likely to pose a deadly threat and which need to be tackled with intensive treatment
Currently the aggressiveness of a tumour can only be loosely identified meaning some patients have debilitating treatment that is not necessary
By EMMA INNES
PUBLISHED: 12:23 EST, 18 November 2013 | UPDATED: 12:25 EST, 18 November 2013

Less Than One Third NYC Public School Students Passed Reading Exam

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/less_than_third_reading_exams_public_gGQdfTWObFecMAsHsnti3I

Less than a third of NY's public school students passed math, reading exams last year
By YOAV GONEN
New York Post
Last Updated: 1:08 AM, August 7, 2013
Posted: 1:06 AM, August 7, 2013

India Exposed; One Month Wives For Sex

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9993453/Teenager-exposes-Indias-one-month-wives-sex-tourism.html

Teenager exposes India's 'one month wives' sex tourism
A 17-year-old girl has exposed the scale of Islamic sex tourism in India where Muslim men from the Middle East and Africa are buying 'one month wives' for sex.
By Dean Nelson,
Hyderabad
5:19PM BST 14 Apr 2013

Group Arrested For Ringers Taking Teacher Tests

[From article]
Mumford "obtained tens of thousands of dollars" during the alleged
conspiracy, which prosecutors say lasted from 1995 to 2010 in
Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.


http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/25/15430647-cheating-scandal-feds-say-teachers-hired-stand-in-to-take-their-certification-tests?lite

Cheating scandal: Feds say teachers hired stand-in to take their
certification tests
By Adrian Sainz,
The Associated Press

FInancial Scrutiny Needed of Police

An officer who stole drugs from police evidence rooms, may be a user. But he more than likely enjoys financial or other profits from stealing the drugs. Requiring police audits every six months would ensure that they are not making more money than they earn legally, or getting other consideration. Drug testing will not reveal selling drug evidence.

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220116chief_seeks_fix_theft_by_rogue_cop_spurs_call_for_random_drug_tests/

Chief: Drug testing key to stopping rogue cops
By Matt Stout
Boston Herald
Monday, January 16, 2012