ROPE Finds the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies to Be Essentially National Social Studies Standards

One of the biggest "truth embellishment" Oklahomans have been told of late is the fact that Oklahoma has Oklahoma Academic Standards instead of Common Core. To kill both the lie that these (the Common Core) are state led standards and that our Social Studies standards are NOT National standards (as in Common Core), I put together a brief slide presentation to cover BOTH issues. This is the printed version of that slide presentation. Below are the slides with captions. Nearly every one of them is a screenshot from either the Common Core or OSDE websites. The Common Core website shows that the CCSS are licensed and copyrighted by the NGA and CCSSO. They also provide a liability waiver in case you hate them so both the NGA and CCSSO can say, "Too bad, so sad, we're not to blame for them." If, however, you want to sue for damages done by using the standards, you'll have to do it in DC! very local - VERY Oklahoma!

Our RoadMap To the Common Core showing the "four pillars" of education 'reform'. 1. Common Core State Standards (in blue), 2. a State Longitudinal Database System, 3. Using the Turnaround model on failing schools (created by Bill Gates and used in Chicago while Arne Duncan was superintendent there! - also in blue) and, 4. Teacher accountability measures (yellow). All four have been dictated by the USDE to state who took the SFSF funds (all 50), Race to the Top grants and/or a No Child Left Behind Waiver. Gosh, the feds didn't want states to use them, did they?

So, business leaders met with state governors to create the standards because businesses were complaining they couldn't find any good workers. What happened to OJT? Why pay for OJT yourself, if you can get governors to pay for it FOR you through a series of public/private partnerships, tax breaks and a complete overhaul of the nation's education system from a learning model to a workforce training model?

But aren't we led to believe that the CCSSI movement was an 'organic', 'grassroots' education movement that filtered UP from the states in 2010? This is not the case, obviously. The CCSSI were being discussed by governors and business leaders for years!

Here is David Coleman - the 'architect' of the CCSSI. Yes, he worked 5 years in health care, in financial institutions and did PRO BONO (?) work in education? HE'S writing educational standards? Interesting.

Dr. Barresi hired John Kramen out of Achieve. His CV is available for download in the State's NCLB waiver application which can be found here; http://www2.ed.gov/policy/e seaflex/ok.pdf.

Just a couple screen shots of Ed.gov showing the four pillars of education reform for the Race to the Top grant. Consequently, many states adopted the Common Core simply to be competitive for the money. Oklahoma put CCSSI in state law in 2010 via SB2033, but Brad Henry put English/LA, Math, Social Studies and Science 'common core' standards into state law via executive order to increase the states chances of winning a RTT grant.

Mary Fallin - against the wishes of the Republican Party via a Resolution Against the Common Core State Standards - is advocating for the Common Core as NGA Chair. The RNC resolution was written by Oklahoma's own State Committeewoman Carolyn McClarty and signed by the State Committeeman and Committeewoman of each state.

So, we've gone from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic to Accountability, Achievement and Alignment?

Here, we're told that the OSDE is using Common Core. CCSSI is being portrayed as an umbrella covering every aspect of Oklahoma Standards.

Letter from Brad Henry indicating that ALL Common Core State Standards were adopted by Oklahoma in order to get a Race to the Top Grant. The left screen shot is of the OSDE website where the school code is found. This is a screenshot of that page. The right is the letter that can be found in Oklahoma's RTT grant on the Ed.gov website.

Screen shot showing that when you click on the URL for the English/LA standards, they go directly to the CCSSI document.

Here are some combined screenshots showing where every link to the English/LA standards go on the OSDE OAS page.

Here are the links to the OAS math standards page. Note that the link to the Math standards themselves go directly to the CCSSI document.

Here is the screenshot for the OAS Social Studies. The underlined language and the box in the lower left shows that the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies include the Common Core State Standards.

This is a comparison of the National Council for Social Studies webpage about the national Social Studies standards and the FAQ page of the CCSSI webpage showing that the CCSSO worked on both standards and they are "state led".

The left is a screen shot from the Oklahoma Academic (C3) Standards Implementation Guide that shows that the OSDE is teaching our Oklahoma children that we live in an "American Constitutional Democracy". I have asked Constitutional scholars about this term - they do not know what it means. We live in a Republic - as I have written before. The right side are screen shots from the National Social Studies standards. Please note that they ALSO refer to America as a Constitutional Democracy.

The left side of this slide contains screen shots from the National History Standards. The right side contains screen shots from the Oklahoma Academic Standards for History. Please NOTE: C3 is the same (one c is Citizen, the other is Civic Life), they BOTH have the four main areas as shown. The national standards have something called an Inquiry Arc and the OAS have something called a 'coherency storyline' - these are essentially the same thing.

Written and prepared by Jenni White, President of Restore Oklahoma Public Education. www.RestoreOkPublicEducation.com jenni@RestoreOkPublicEducation.com