An earlier post on the blog reported that Girl Scouts was now offering a badge or badges for meeting Common Core objectives. Some readers insisted that was not true. According to this reader, who provides a link, it is true. The question for me is why Girl Scouts is tying its merit badges to school work and why it is endorsing an initiative that is not yet proven or established. Isn’t scouting about scouting and hands-on experience and service?
The reader comments:
“I am a longtime Girl Scout and have been a leaders for several years and I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA is attempting to show a connection between Girl Scout Badges and Journeys, and Common Core objectives. As a Brownie leader, I just clicked on the link you posted to see what Common Core objectives my Brownies “accomplished” when they recently earned their “Snacks”, “Painter” and “hiker” badges. The page that came up was this one:
Click to access CommonCore_brownies_Badges.pdf
It states that when earning badges the following standards applied (list of basic reading literature and informational text standards — main idea and detail, learning vocabulary, etc.)
My Brownies didn’t do any reading to earn the badges. For the Hiker badge — they read maps, learned how to dress for the weather, and hiked! No main idea, no detail. For the Painter badge — they painted! No character, setting, problem or solution. And for the Snacks badge — they washed, peeled, sliced, cut, mixed, measured, cooked (with adult supervision) tasted and ate.
The probably did acquire some new vocabulary along the way.
As I said, I cannot for the life of me understand why GSUSA thinks anyone would want to know that Girl Scout badges have any alignment with any state or Common Core curriculum! Why should they? Scouting isn’t school! Kids get enough of school… at school! And clearly they do NOT actually correlate with math or language arts standards.
So why try to make it look as if they do? The only thing I can think of is that GSUSA and local councils might be trying to get grant funding to put on GS programs, and the people issuing the grants are asking whether Girl Scouting is an education program in some way? It’s a long shot, but it is all I can think of.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought the scouts have long advocated an ideological, generally right-wing-ish agenda (boys more than the girls). I know that’s a vague sort of presumption, but I just figured it was all ‘part and parcel’. I was sort of presuming a little follow-the-money hunt would find some funding-commonality between the groups. I know that what happens on-the-ground, that is in any random brownie troupe, is quite different from the ideological bent of the organization (as a rule). Someone with spare googling-time, should try following both trails and see if they maybe wind up in the same place?
I guess that Bill Gates gave GSUSA a big boatload of money.
Wish he would take up golf.
The Heritage Foudations’s take on CCSS and the Girl Scouts.
Girl Scouts “Tag Along” with Common Core
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/05/01/thin-mints-and-executive-orders-girl-scouts-align-with-common-core/
And the WaPo’s article in late April. Note comments section.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/27/and-now-girl-scout-badges-aligned-to-common-core-standards/
Good afternoon, I was just reading this blog on Girl Scouts and CC and I wondered who is behind the CC in Girl Scouts? Are there any names, corporations, reformers, etc associated with the adding of such Common Core dogma to the badges? And what if the Girl Scout is dyslexic or special ed? I am thinking of my friend’s adopted daughter in Florida in the Girl Scouts and with an IEP. Does this mean that for her to get those badges she now has to do reading and school type activities? Some one has to be behind this push…IS there a reader out there who knows? Thank you… jo ann
Jo,
As a leader, I verified with GSUSA and they assured me that the program is staying the same and they way they girls earn the patches has stayed the same.
The only change was made to verbage that can be shown from Girl Scouts to Schools to show how a specific patch is aligned with Standards.
Your friend’s daughter should not see ANY differences in her meetings or the way she earns her patches.
I hope this helps. Please contact GSUSA if you need further help 800-478-7248.
Well, the essential question is not, “why in the world would they have such a thing,” but who is behind controlling every institution in the world?
I am also a Girl Scout Leader and a Proud member of the Service Team.
When I first heard about Girl Scouts aligning with Common Core, I too was shocked. I could not even begin to imagine WHY!
So, I asked why on a Facebook group (NO COMMON CORE) why Girl Scouts was aligned? To my surprise no one had an answer to that question, just other reasons not to support them. Which was not my question and the issues that were brought up were “not mine”.
So, I decided the only RIGHT choice to make was to call GSUSA. I contacted them and they were very helpful in explaining the situation to me.
Girl Scouts has a relationship with local schools to help engage their students in the Girl Scout Program. In order to be successful at that, they needed to be able to show them how the steps that the girls take while earning a patch align with Common Core Standards.
The Girls Scouts Program DID NOT CHANGE, our patches DID NOT CHANGE, and our steps DID NOT CHANGE. The link provided is showing how the patch aligns, it is not intended for the girls to have to do…most leaders are not teachers and most leaders would not know if those steps were met or not. That is just a reference between Girl Scouts and the Schools.
What parents, leaders and girls need to know is that our program is the same. Again, nothing changes. They still earn their patches the same way they did this year. Leaders do not need to do anything different.
If anyone has questions on this, do not rely on a website, a blog or an email contact GSUSA at (800) 478-7248 Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m.-7:30 p.m. ET.
“Girl Scouts has a relationship with local schools to help engage their students in the Girl Scout Program. In order to be successful at that, they needed to be able to show them how the steps that the girls take while earning a patch align with Common Core Standards.”
Here’s my problem with that: GSA *needed* to show how the steps the girls take while earning a patch align with Common Core Standards”?!?!?! I have two girls of scouting age and neither of them would give a rat’s patootie about whether their badge aligned with CCSS!!!! They would, however, probably run screaming from something they’d see as a non-school activity trying to masquerade as one.
With respect, I can’t buy that the GSA *needed* to do this.
That’s a nice politically correct answer from GSUSA, but there is more to the story than that. In their history, have their badges EVER been aligned to ANY state standards? Was there, for example, a Florida version of Sunshine State Standards-aligned badges? Not that I’ve ever heard of. There’s definitely something else going on here…Bill Gates got ahold of them somehow.
I think your clarification may have confused the issue more. Girl Scouts do not offer nor earn Common Core Badges. The badges have been the same since the last overhaul around the time I became a troop co-leader, five years ago, when they added in more financial, technical and business skills.
As we have for the past 101 years, we earn badges for things like Dance, Drawing, Cooking, Photography, Government, Financial Literacy, etc. That the activities we must perform to earn these badges may align with CCSS is the result of someone at GSUSA matching them up after the fact. I had never heard of it until I read it here.
Also, there is a vast difference in ideology between BSUSA and GSUSA. GSUSA accepts any girl, of any faith, or of no faith at all. Yes, there are faith badges, but they are earned by individual girls while practicing their own faith.
Well, as Twain said, history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.
If the Girl Scouts are hawking the Common Corporate Standards to their young charges, they are merely maintaining their traditions.
According to her book, “Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Defense,” by Tracy C. Davis, both Boy and Girl Scouts received badges during the Cold War for things such as emergency preparedness training for an atomic attack, fallout shelter provisioning, and training as message carriers in the event of nuclear holocaust.
We can all laugh ruefully at the futility and cheesiness of that bygone era, when children were being indoctrinated into Cold War orthodoxies, but let’s not forget that last year Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice were given a platform in Foreign Affairs magazine to warn about the dangers public education poses to national security.
The Scouts are just maintaining their traditions. Only this time, instead of preparing for attack by Godless Bolsheviks, they’re being indoctrinated to use the Common Corporate Standards to resist The Enemy Within: public school teachers.
Why did Duncan enlist the US Chamber of Commerce last month to defend CCSS –and what exactly did he want businesses to do to defend national education standards and why?
Who paid for the recent CCSS ad campaign in the NYC subway? http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/05/03/bizarre-common-core-ad-campaign-on-nyc-subway/ Tax dollars? For what purpose? Once states and districts have signed on to RttT, as NY did, CCSS is a done deal, not a choice.
This is a no brainer. Look at the “partners” of the Girl Scouts Arne Duncan’s Department of Education is one of the government funders. As is Dell, which is also on board with the neo-liberal agenda.
This is all about branding, marketing and profit-making. And, sadly, as has become typical for our neo-liberal capitalist tyrants, once again, they are doing it at the expense of children and their right to have a childhood.
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
Adolf Hitler
Oh no! Wonder who gave the Girl Scouts $$$$$?
“Girl Scouts has a relationship with local schools to help engage their students in the Girl Scout Program. In order to be successful at that, they needed to be able to show them how the steps that the girls take while earning a patch align with Common Core Standards.”
Right, and for anyone who buys into that, I have some snow for sale in Alaska.
I looked to see if there were any schools listed as partners or affiliates of the Girl Scouts and I could find none. Neither is the PTA listed. I did, however, notice that among the affiliates listed are the National School Board Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals and and the National Association of Secondary School Principals –all of which appear to support CCSS.
So I looked at the funders of those associations. The National School Board Association doesn’t list their funders, but both of the principals’ associations do. I was surprised to discover that one of the funders of the National Association of Elementary School Principals is Walmart.
The Waltons helped fund the CCSS, along with Gates, Broad, etc., through the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE): http://unitedoptout.com/flyers/architects-of-a-brave-new-world/ They have infiltrated education virtually everywhere.
A lot of Boy Scout troops use schools, too. Will Boy Scouts come out with this dreck too? I have too sons in Scouts: An Eagle Scout and a Star Scout–and I will take them out if that happens.
Oy, TWO sons in Scouts–it’s been a long day!
OH yeah, and one of the funders of the National Association of Secondary School Principals is the College Board, aka David Coleman, chief architect of the CCSS ELA.
Common core proponents are yelling they are just offering standards to school boards and parents, not curriculum.
When the big progressive corporate powers that be bought out all of the Independent Math Curriculum Companies, they made certain to dumb them all down knowing that when curriculum committees went looking for a “world class” Math book, it really did not matter which one was chosen, because they all stunk.
Heads they win, Tails we lose…Suckas!
Here is what they did to Saxon Math:
http://jennyhatch.com/2013/04/30/uncommon-lore-the-original-saxon-math-curriculum-math-a-firm-foundation-to-build-a-homeschool-on/
Microsoft and Girl Scoutts: http://www.gssjc.org/news/2007/4-gotech.cfm
The funding from companies was sold to them as tax advantages funding educational programs that would develop more “pliable” and “cooperative” employees. Sadly I was part of such a pilot program with a Chamber of Commerce in Beaverton,Oregon … before I realized WHAT IT REALLY WAS …. many years later…. : (
I’m a dad in Texas. I was reviewing the Texas knowledge skills suggested for my child next year to see if there are any activities I can do during the summer to help her “get the point”. While thinking of ideas and activities, I wondered, “Since she’s a Girl Scout, do their activities align with TEKS or Common Core Standards.” My Internet search eventually led me to this post.
Common standards and state minimum requirements are not my master. But I don’t claim to be a pedagogical expert. In fact, it scares me when I wonder to what I may NOT be exposing my child. It’s not easy being a parent and hoping you’re giving your child what she needs when her brain needs it.
I use these as a guide, but to be clear, I try to stay at least a year ahead. Is this all I teach my child? Not by a long shot. She’ll learn most of her principles and life beliefs from her family. But I appreciate knowing that the time we spend with scouting also enhances what her Montessori education is providing. The school system helps me teach my children.