Tag: common core

Believe it or not, spring election day is upon us. Today April 4th, 2017 has an important WI statewide race for school superintendent between liberal incumbent Tony Evers and challenger Lowell Holtz. Evers supports Common Core while Holtz opposes it. If you support FEDERAL control of education, then Evers is your man. If you support LOCAL control of education (the way it should be), then Holtz is the candidate you should support. It’s a classic case of liberal establishment verses reformer. We know how you should vote. Other races are on the ballot. If you live in a school district that is having a spending referendum, we would simply encourage you to vote “NO”. School Districts, like all of us, need to live within their means and budgets. All too often school districts are bloated at the top with overpaid administrators. The money is not going into the classroom. Carefully examine candidates at the local level. If you are not sure where they stand, find out. Fort Atkinson common council has one candidate who claimed recently that the community is so safe that the police do not need to carry guns! That is what’s out there folks! Be careful!

The Dangers of vouchers…Trump’s voucher plan. Below is a link to a 38 minute podcast on vouchers and their danger by KrisAnne Hall, lawyer and Constitutional advocate. There is a full all out push coming and it will be led by DeVos.  If successful it will accomplish putting parents under control of federal gov. This will increase money spent by the feds on education from $540,000,000 to $130 billion ($20B from the feds and $110B from the states) if the Trump plan is implemented.  This will be a mechanism of control of all parents/children under the poverty level if they sign on to new voucher programs. If they take the money, they will have to take the mandates of national curriculum and national methodology.   https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/krisanne-hall/episodes/2016-11-29T07_29_17-08_00 #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommnonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

Contact your legislators in support the upcoming right to work bill as well as being repeal of the 48 hour waiting period for handgun purchases. Right to work is all about personal freedom. An individual should not have to be forced into joining a union just because of their chosen career field is one dominated by unions.  The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday,  February 24th.  Invited speakers will go first (likely taking up first 2-3 hours) then the public will have the opportunity to testify.  RTW hearing, February 24th, 10:00 am in Room 411 South of the State Capitol  (Senate’s Labor Committee). Senate Bill 35 and Assembly Bill 49 – Repealing the 48 hour waiting period on handgun purchases only makes sense.  A buyer has a background check completed as part of the purchasing process . The other thing to recognize is that the 48 hour waiting period does not apply to long guns. If a person is determined to do harm to someone else using a gun, it is very easy for them to obtain a long  gun without the 48 hour waiting period.  Finally, as we always need to mention, criminals do not obey the law anyway. These measures simply infringe on…

SAVE THE DATE: COMMUNITY EVENT AND BOARD WORKSHOP WITH DR SANDRA STOTSKY – TONIGHT IN GERMANTOWN!On April 9th Dr. Sandra Stotsky will be leading us in discussion about modern curriculum and modern standards for Germantown School District. Parents of students around the state are encouraged to come and participate in this exchange. April 9, 20147-8:30 p.m. Kennedy Middle School Gold Activity CenterW160 N11836 Crusader Court 253-3450 A professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, Stotsky is credited with developing one of the country’s strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students, as well as the strongest academic standards and licensure tests for prospective teachers, while serving as Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003. She is now Professor of Education Reform in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and holds the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality.

Steve Kauffeld is a member of the Watertown School Board and a member of the Rock River Patriots. March 8, 2014 Letter to the Editor, On Thur Feb 6 th , the people’s voice was stymied, by an orchestrated public hearing lead by Sen.Luther Olsen who is chairman of the Senate Education Committee. The hearing was on Senate Bill 619 co-sponsored by Senator Leah Vukmir and Senator Paul Farrow. I try to attend various legislative hearings in Madison and other locations around the state, particularly those I have a vested interest in. Being a school board member, I have had considerable interest in the implementation of Common Core standards in our state’s public schools.   I don’t know what is more galling to me, the political gamesmanship proffered  by Sen Luther Olsen with his AP interview two hours before the hearing was held, stating that this Bill was dead, the preferential treatment given the DPI, CESA administrators, our district school superintendent and their staff and supportive teachers, or the subsequent AP article published in the Watertown Times Fri.   March 7th, page 7, first section. I could write an entire article on the bias shown and misrepresentations printed in that article….

The Rock River Patriots are having a meeting on January 17th (tomorrow) in Fort Atkinson. We welcome Dr. Duke Pesta to The Dwight Foster Library, tomorrow, Friday January 17th to speak about Common Core Standards that are being implemented.  If you are concerned about public / private education in Wisconsin, this is something worth attending.   We will begin at 6:00 pm.   Here is a printable flyer with a bio of our speaker Dr. Duke Pesta: CommonCore_Fort Atkinson 011714

Happy New Year!  Now is the time to make your resolutions.  Do you plan on being more informed, or involved?  We encourage you to consider taking that next step.  January 7th is the deadline to file your papers to run for local office including county board and school board.  If you want to make a difference, now is the time. These are areas that directly affect you, your children, and grandchildren.  You can have a huge impact. The Rock River Patriots Meeting in January has been changed from January 10th to January 17th to accommodate our speaker. Please pass this along to all your friends who may be looking to attend.  We welcome Dr. Duke Pesta to The Dwight Foster Library in Fort Atkinson to speak about the Common Core Standards that are being implemented.  We will begin at 6:00 pm.

Senator Vukmir On Common Core Standards

The Common Core Story “Our schools have been quietly taken over. We are no longer teaching the skills and concepts that our kids need for the complex, unpredictable 21st century; we are increasingly teaching the skills that billionaires want their workforces to have in order to boost their profits. Gone are the days of creativity, innovation, personal growth, teamwork, and dreams; here are the days of nationalized pigeonholing, segregation and dysfunction. It used to be that in America you could be whatever you dreamed you could be and you were allowed to change your mind if your dreams led you in a new direction. In the near future, kids will be allowed to be whatever their Pearson test score says they’re qualified to be, and nothing more, unless we, their loving parents and teachers, stand up and fight for our children and our schools.” Kris Neilsen, author of Children of the Core Here is the link to the full PDF document available for download about Common Core:  The Common Core Story

Wisconsin Joint Select Committee on Common Core Standards *** PUBLIC HEARING *** THIS Thursday, 10/3, Noon – 8 PM Wisconsin State Capitol Room 411 South In an interview with Wisconsin Reporter last week, Governor Scott Walker took a public stand on Common Core State Standards (CCSS), calling on the Wisconsin State Legislature to hold hearings that the public has demanded for months in order to investigate these controversial standards. The governor stated,  “I’d like us to be in the position where we can identify our own unique standards that I think in many ways will be higher and more aggressive than the ones they’re talking about.” The legislature responded almost immediately after Walker’s public statement, quickly announcing an Assembly Select Committee, to be headed by Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt (R-Fond du Lac), a former educator of 22 years, and a Senate Select Committee, to be headed by Sen. Paul Farrow (R-Pewaukee). The two committees will jointly hold their first hearing on Common Core State Standards this Thursday, October 3rd, from noon until 8:00pm in Madison at the State Capitol, with additional hearings to be announced. In speaking with the committee chairs’ offices, we’re told they pushed the hearing time back from what was…