Karen Braun is a writer and conference speaker on issues related education and family life. Her work has appeared in the American Thinker, Crosswalk, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, WatchDog Wire, and various other websites and magazines. She has also appeared on TV and radio venues. Along with blogging, Karen also enjoys homeschooling, running marathons, and spending time with her husband, their six children, and two grand children. For more information please contact Karen at spunkyhomeschool at gmail dot com
The first meeting of the Michigan House Common Core Committee was frustrating to say the least. Testimony was presented by Mike Cohen, President of Achieve and Mike Flanagan, Michigan’s State Superintendent. Both strong advocates of Common Core had testimony that included biased terminology, misleading statements, incomplete answers to questions and Cohen had blatant lies. (Video of […]
Diane Ravitch explains how Bill Gates is moving past K-12 and taking his money to reform higher education. With $36 billion, the Gates Foundation has too much money, too much power, and not enough common sense nor willingness to listen to those who warn that they are doing harm to basic social institutions. Now the […]
The media is working hard to write the narrative that those who oppose Common Core are “fringe.” Jack Lessenberry chimes in with this headline, “The lunatic fringe opposes Common Core.:” America always has had strange outliers on the margins of our politics, from half-secret movements like the Know-Nothings to the left-wing crazies of the late […]
Two speakers FOR the Common Core and none AGAINST intended to give a historical view of the Common Core. This fact was not lost on Melanie Kurdys who said, “That is very disappointing to me in terms of balance,” Kurdys said. “He’s [Rep. Kelly] assured me that the next meetings will be more balanced.” […]
A YouTube of the hearing should be available shortly but in the meantime here’s a couple news stories about today’s hearing. From MLive: Tempers flare at 1st Common Core hearing as legislators clash with Flanagan, each other. Flanagan began his testimony before the panel by asking legislators to take action as soon as possible, so […]
The first House Panel on Common Core is today at 9 AM. You can watch it live by going to this link. http://house.michigan.gov/htv_detailed.asp
Hearings begin tomorrow in Lansing to decide the fate of Common Core in Michigan. Lori Higgins, education writer at the Detroit Free Press thinks this should have been a “slam dunk.” Michigan’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards, a set of learning goals embraced by 44 other states in the nation, should have been […]
Are Common Core Standards just for K-12? Apparently not. The National Center for Post-Secondary Research (NCPR) published an abstract in February 2013, The Common Core State Standards Implications for Community Colleges and Student Preparedness for College. The NCPR authors recommended, that community colleges use the CCSS 11th grade assessment as one in a set of […]
The Michigan House Panel on Common Core will hold it’s first hearing next Tuesday with a vote predicted in September. The Petosky News called the outlook for approval of the Common Core “decent.” However, proponents of the standards are not taking any chances; scheduled to convince lawmakers that this is all “state-led” is Achieve […]
In his speech to news editors at their annual convention, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, When the critics can’t persuade you that the Common Core is a curriculum, they make even more outlandish claims. They say that the Common Core calls for federal collection of student data. For the record, we are not allowed […]