SPI Douglas follows predecessors: rebrands Common Core

Breitbart News stuns with the headlined article, “Arizona State Board of Education ‘Rebrands’ Common Core.” Yes, the same Common Core that had parents throughout the state so riled, they elected unknown Diane Douglas as Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction based on her promise to repeal the so-called standards.

Seeing Red AZ celebrated Douglas’ huge win opposing Common Core as she trounced the incumbent in the Sept. 2, 2014 Primary Election. In the comment section of this post, she noted she was “honored to have our support and endorsement.” 

Conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin was an early endorser. She also praised Douglas for calling out Arizona Common Core promoters for their devious rebranding scheme.

Arizona parents have previously been through this “rebranding” con. Gov. Jan Brewer and Douglas’ predecessor John Huppenthal already pulled a fast one as they magically re-christened Common Core as “Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards” — hoping no one would notice. Malkin devoted countless columns to exposing the federal overreach that aims to place control of local schools in the hands of unelected Washington bureaucrats.

In Sept. 2013 SRAZ posted “Educrat trio: Huppenthal, Brewer, AZ Republic,” exposing the deceitful scheme to which Diane Douglas appeared to be the antidote. She wasn’t. 

Diane Douglas rode the anti-Common Core horse to the winner’s circle. Now she’s exposed as throwing the race.

H/T commenter azgary

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Republicrats readying for battle with Trump

Donald Trump is still 38 days away from his Jan. 20 inauguration as the 45th president of the United States. That fact hasn’t kept Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan from placing him squarely in their sights and giving him more grief than they ever gave to Barack Obama. Hang on tight. Gird your loins. We’re in for a rough ride.

Patrick Buchanan sheds some much-needed light on the back story in this excellent commentary titled, “Will Trump defy McCain and Rubio?” It’s today’s reading assignment to make us smarter.

AZ joins states fighting Obama bathroom directives

Obama’s transgender bathroom mandate meets with resistance

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas have announced that they have joined ten other states in a federal lawsuit to challenge Barack Obama’s mandate requiring all public K-12 schools to open up boys’ and girls’ locker rooms and restrooms to students of the opposite sex, based on student perceptions of their “gender identity.”

Since the President has threatened to deny federal funding to all schools that object to this outrageous decree,  Arizona has joined Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Georgia, West Virginia and Wisconsin in a lawsuit filed in the United States Court for the Northern District of Texas. The lawsuit is focused on who should set these sensitive policies —- the federal government via executive order or states and local school districts. The challenge seeks declaratory relief against a number of federal agencies in order to block the implementation of the administration’s unconstitutional interpretation of the law. The Heber-Overgaard Unified School District has also joined the state’s lawsuit as a plaintiff.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in response the Obama administration’s issuance of a broad directive advising every public school district in the country they must allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity rather than their biological sex.

The implicit threat is that schools that do not abide by the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid.

Read the formal filing of the complaint which states in part these truths regarding the overt attempts at social engineering by the radically left-wing lame duck president:

“Defendants have conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights. Defendants’ rewriting of Title VII and Title IX is wholly incompatible with Congressional text. Absent action in Congress, the States, or local communities, Defendants cannot foist these radical changes on the nation.”

Left’s utterly ridiculous education statements

Liberal Provocateur E.J. Montini, one of the remaining henchmen at the increasingly irrelevant Periódico de la República de Arizona (Arizona Republic) headlines his column “Arizona is selling our kids’ brains to the Koch brothers.”

In Liberal Land, the Koch brothers are targeted and reviled for being wealthy political conservatives who usually donate to GOP candidates. No such indignant hostility exists when radical leftist ideologues George Soros, Tom Steyer, or Michael Bloomberg — among the multitude of other Dems* finance the left-wing agenda.

Question for E.J. Montini: Would the disturbing facts dropping out of the mouth of Robert Chanin, longtime General Counsel for the “powerful” American Education Association (on the occasion of his retirement),  also qualify as “selling our kids’ brains?” Those leftwing unionist teachers spend more time with America’s children than most of their parents do. The NEA members  are proficient propagandists. Keep these words in mind when you mark your ballots on Prop. 123. Don’t fall for the con. Vote No. 

* H/T The Sunlight Foundation.

Parent alert: The Feds want your kids 24/7

Public boarding schools on Obama regime’s agenda

It was not even a dozen years ago that apprehensive Arizona parents balked at what was being pushed as “Full Day Kindergarten” by leftist Gov. Janet Napolitano. It was put into effect in 2004 despite objections to the governmental overreach subjecting preschoolers to institutionalization and liberal indoctrination when they were barely out of diapers.

Many parents opted out.

Fast forward as the educrats have even more insidious schemes in mind for America’s children. Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday proposed the idea of public boarding schools open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“One idea that I threw out is the idea of public boarding schools,” Duncan said at the National Summit on Youth Violence Prevention in Crystal City, Va. “That’s a little bit of a different idea —- a controversial idea —- but the question is do we have some children where there’s not a mom, there’s not a dad, there’s not a grandma, there’s just nobody at home?”

Does Duncan mean ever? Or are these parents or other relatives simply at work when the kids arrive home from school?  We all know not all home situations are ideal, but less ideal are governmental communes.

“There’s just certain kids we should have 24/7 to really create a safe environment and give them a chance to be successful,” Arne Duncan continued. “I think all of our schools should be community centers,” he said. “Our schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day with a wide variety of after-school programming.

Pay attention. We are witnessing the incremental encroachment of the benevolent dictatorship which author Aldous Huxley prophetically envisioned in 1932 in his literary masterpiece, “Brave New World.”  No longer fictional, it’s being brought to us nearly 85 years later by the Obama administration. This book was once required reading in high school English classes. It needs to be brought back.

Read the full CNSNews report by Penny Starr who points to documented soaring school violence rates. The report includes the brief but nonetheless alarming news video clip of Secretary Duncan.

Looking small: Ducey disses Douglas

Is Lisa Graham Keegan Ducey’s shadow education superintendent?

KPHO TV 5, the local CBS affiliate, reports on the most recent Republican snub lobbed in the direction of Diane Douglas, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. This time the salvo comes from newly elected Gov. Doug Ducey, a fellow Republican, who neither informed Douglas of his education town hall nor invited her to participate in the Thursday event.

Since his Jan. 5, inauguration, Ducey has focused on education issues —- clearly excluding the state schools chief. Previously it was state Republican Party chairman Robert Graham who omitted Douglas from this “Your Republican Team” mailer in advance of the General Election.

Douglas was recognized as the lone conservative among the statewide top-tier of elected officials, waging a winning grassroots campaign due to her resolute opposition to the fed’s heavy handedness in promoting the increasingly unpopular Common Core. Her message resonated with voters, carrying her across the finish line with a stunning 58 to 41 Primary victory.  In the General Election she defeated a heavily funded, leftist educrat opponent.

Yet right out of the chute, and before his actual swearing-in, Governor-elect Ducey announced the formation of an education subcommittee which included Common Core enthusiast Lisa Graham Keegan, a former RINO turned Independent, who endorsed Douglas’ Democrat challenger.

During the campaign, Keegan attacked Douglas, stating she was “promoting a sort of a paranoia” by opposing the federal education scheme. Keegan, who was John McCain’s education advisor during his doomed presidential bid, referred to Douglas’ opposition to Common Core as “destructive.”

In announcing the formation of his education team, Ducey claimed he was looking “forward to working with education professionals to identify the best policies to improve our schools, find the most talented people to assume key positions in my administration and ensure we are putting Arizona students, teachers and parents first.”

Ducey’s town hall brush-off of Douglas while Keegan participated in the forum, puts a lie to his claim of “working together” for the betterment of Arizona’s students, teachers and parents. The Arizona Constitution provides for both a governor and a superintendent of public instruction in addition to other elected state officers. Each job has specific duties and oversight. It’s time for Gov. Ducey to govern and let the actual superintendent do her job.

GI files lawsuit against ousted AZ Ed Sup’t Huppenthal

Teacher opposed to Common Core gets legal assistance

The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Brad McQueen, a fifth grade teacher in Tucson’s Tanque Verde School District, and an outspoken opponent of Common Core. The civil suit McQueen v. Huppenthal was filed on McQueen’s behalf under the free-speech provisions of the Arizona Constitution and the First Amendment.

The lawsuit names John Huppenthal in his official capacity as Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Bureaucrats at the Arizona Department of Education oppose any criticism of their plans for implementation of the federally mandated Common Core scheme —- deceptively re-christened  Arizona College and Career Ready Standards in an attempt to dupe anxious parents. After he spoke out against the federal program, McQueen was the subject of a deluge of ostracism, intimidation, and a vicious email campaign. He was removed from the Department of Education’s standardized-testing committees.

The lawsuit asks that the state retaliation against him cease and he be reinstated to non-Common Core committees.

McQueen is the author of “The Cult of Common Core: Obama’s Final Solution for Your Child’s Mind and Our Country’s Exceptionalism.”  Read excerpts here by clicking the “look inside” arrow, provided courtesy of Amazon.

The Arizona Daily Independent carries the foul email exchanges in this June 30, 2014 article by Brad McQueen. The article follows the stream of emails between Angela Escobar, Program Project Specialist at the AZ Dept of Education, and other department employees during the workday. Escobar used her office computer to email associates, referring to Brad McQueen as “What a f*cktard!”

With the recent election of conservative Diane Douglas taking over the helm of this rudderless ship, sanity will return to the Arizona Department of Education.  It can’t happen soon enough. 

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, an early Diane Douglas endorser, has devoted the past two years to exposing the ‘Big Government and Big Business’ forces that have colluded on this boondoggle and have been partners on expanding the federal role in education —- which she calls ‘Rotten to the Core.’ Her numerous articles can be seen here.