Restore Oklahoma Public Education (R.O.P.E.) is committed to educating tax-paying citizens and parent stakeholders on the ways in which the methods and philosophies used in public education today affect them. From budgetary allotments to curricula, ROPE attempts to make Oklahomans aware of how every dollar spent and every idea taught can actively influence the future voters enrolled in Oklahoma Public Education today.
(please note my comment at the bottom of this article as well as that on line)
In crafting a set of learning goals that nearly every state in the nation has embraced, the architects of the common-core standards effort sought to import from abroad key lessons about what top-performing countries teach their students.
This is the actual Power Point presentation given to the Oklahoma House Common Education Committee Oct. 7, 2011 on our objections to the Common Core State Standards Initiative in Oklahoma.
It goes VERY quickly as I did not time the slides. In order to read the slides as they appear, press the pause button.
The written presentation we provided to the Committee at the time of our testimony can be found here:
Though it was a disappointment to us that Dr. Barresi - whom ROPE endorsed for State Superintendent of Public Instruction - discounted all the hard work and study we did on the Common Core (at our own expense), it was certainly much harder to take when she addressed us like a simple playground bully, denigrating us at will in front of the House Education Committee.
Here, she disrespects Representative Sally Kern openly and publicly.
According to a NewsOK editorial June 2, Oklahomans should thoroughly support an appeal to the Obama administration by our State Department of Education for a piece of the $500 million dollars set aside for a NEW Race to the Top (RTT) grant offering. Ostensibly, this grant would help improve early education programs in Oklahoma, like the EduCare program founded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. In fact, Kaiser even joined with the Obama administration in announcing the contest.
Laurie Rodgers
Betrayed, Why Public Education is Failing (Blog)
The current federal education agenda includes national standards (also known as the common core state standards, or CCSS), national tests, and national curricula. Attendent in this federal agenda are increasing costs, increasing federal requirements and restrictions, and increased federal control over the classroom and education policy.
By JIM MYERS World Washington Bureau
Published: 4/8/2011 2:26 AM
Last Modified: 4/8/2011 7:04 AM
WASHINGTON - State Superintendent Janet Barresi told U.S. lawmakers Thursday that Oklahoma needs more flexibility from Congress to address its current education crisis, and she urged them to consider allowing federal dollars to follow students to private schools.
"I think these are taxpayer dollars,'' Barresi said, citing an existing state law that allows such funding for disabled children. "These dollars need to be following the child to the classroom.''
The bottom portion of this note was originally written by Julie McKenzie last year (January 2010). I have been to the website she used last year and these books are still on the list.
There are also some on the list that seem fine, but how do you know unless you look at them?
Today, as I was going through my daughter's school work (she is in 3rd grade at a local public elementary school), I realized there were two pieces of work entitled, "Green Math". Now these are simple math problems written on a white sheet of papers as answers. The questions, are apparently in a book she is not able to bring home. They look in the book for the questions and then write the answers down on a sheet of paper and hand them in as their completed assignment.
