(Hour 2b)
Dr. Duke Pesta
Our guest today was Dr. Duke Pesta, FreedomProject Education’s Academic Director and Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He came on to
share about Common Core. They talked about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and his lawsuit against the Federal Government over Common Core. Dr. Pesta’s issue with Common Core is that it’s not about education, it’s about money and centralized control.
According to Pesta, he who makes the test controls what’s taught. How much control should the federal government have over issues like this?
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2013 Senate Bill 48 enabled the first NH NCLB Waiver, but it did NOT increase any requirement for students to take those statewide assessments. Those are exactly the same. The NH DoE tracks parent refusals on its website at 1-2% per year.
The only thing that changed this year was the Commissioner’s attitude. She used inappropriate Technical Advisories to bully and intimidate parents who refused the tests for their children. The number of parent refusals will increase significantly greater this year, as will the number of students being home schooled.
Whoops… please remove “greater” from previous comment.