There is a secret society that was created by a couple of dads who are teachers on Long Island. They were worried about all the testing and the way that schools were misusing the test results to label kids.
These dads wanted to protect their children–their own and the ones they teach and even the ones they don’t teach–from practices that they knew were harmful.
But what to do?
First they dressed up in funny costumes, but that didn’t get them far.
Eventually they settled on the idea of green laces, either shoelaces or wristbands.
They called their group “Lace to the Top,” to symbolize kindness and concern for children, as opposed to the aggressive competition encouraged by Race to the Top.
If you watch their video, you might catch a glimpse on me being interviewed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. I was wearing a green bracelet; I gave the laces to Jon Stewart. I hope he wears them.
This is a gentle kind of resistance, but it is resistance nonetheless.
Its message: Our children are more than a test score. We care about all kids, even those who don’t get the top test scores. After all, only a few kids get the top test scores, and what kind of society throws away the majority of its children because they are not at “the top?” Every child is precious and deserves the best education we can give them and many opportunities to develop into good people.
Is the message of “Lace to the Top” too gentle to overcome the “survival of the fittest” mentality that is implied by Race to the Top? Funny how history repeats itself. In school, we learned about social Darwinism, and we thought it was an obsolete ideology. We were taught that our society had long ago outgrown the philosophy that the strong win and the weak die off. We thought that our society had learned some lessons about social responsibility. And yet, here we are, more than a century later, with a federal policy that explicitly encourages survival of the fittest.
The dads who created Lace to the Top want us to think of all children as if they were our own. No winners or losers. Children. Each of them deserves the best education that we can provide and that they need. If you agree, get your green shoelaces and Lace to the Top.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The dog days of summer. My only street theater is a mid summer night’s dream.
don’t trip on those laces manning the barricades of the mind. Don’t start the revolution without them. From images of bare breasted mother liberty to shoelaces. “Vive La Difference”
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Perfect resonance with Diane’s post and this imaginative initiative. I will be looking for green shoelaces.
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I am having trouble posting the link, but a Long Island newspaper, The News Review, from Riverhead, has a guest column on protecting our children from common core. I am sure the Lace to the Top members, as well, as Diane and others, would enjoy reading it. Hopefully someone can assist me in posting the link. Go Long Island!!!
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I could not post the web address of the editorial so here it is in its entirety:
Guest Column: Protect our children from Common Core
by Dennis Noncarrow
Common Core is a federal government power grab disguised as a “revamping” of our nation’s educational system — an educational system that, with all its flaws, managed to produce people who put a man on the moon and gave the world the Internet.
Why is it that by 2011, 45 states (blue and red) had officially adopted the Common Core State Standards, yet in 2013 62 percent of Americans said they’d never even heard of it. Why did the governors who adopted Common Core do it without discussing, disclosing or debating it with their taxpaying constituents, the very people it concerns the most?
As with anything political, follow the money.
Bill Gates is the major player in Common Core. In 2013 alone, he contributed over $200 million to encourage the creation and adoption of Common Core. Pure altruism on his part? No, merely an investment in Gates’ Inbloom, which stood to make $2 to $5 per student for the privilege of participating in the student data-mining scheme, despite being listed as a nonprofit entity.
Inbloom Corp. has thankfully been shut down permanently due to the avalanche of parental objections about student privacy. There’s no force in nature more powerful than a mother’s instinct to protect her children from a perceived threat. (Common Core is quickly becoming the proverbial ‘third rail’ for the elected.)
Other recipients of Gates’ “dollars” are the National Governor’s Association, the Fordham Institute, Achieve, Inc., the U.S. Department of Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Wow! Those billions are buying a lot of “reform” for our children, don’t you think?
When Race to the Top began, it dangled a carrot worth $4.35 billion. Common Core was included in that bait. Democrats and Republicans alike signed onto a program that had in its grant application requirements a hidden stipulation: In order to apply for some of that $4.35 billion, state university and college presidents had to agree they would not place incoming students in remedial courses in any subject (i.e., Algebra II) for which they had already passed a standardized Common Core exam. This, despite the fact that over 40 percent of college freshmen need remedial mathematics and over 60 percent need remediation of some kind. This essentially means that students will not be properly prepared and, over time, the bar will have to be lowered, the content of courses will have to drop to accommodate the students and the “dumbing down” of our children will be complete.
The Pearson Data Solutions-Gates connection is also a matter of interest. Pearson’s role in Common Core is data-mining. Joy Pullman, Heartland Institute education research fellow, states; “The Administration has essentially rewritten federal privacy regulations without the approval of Congress — to claim that information on children can be shared without parental knowledge or consent … As part of the agreements signed between state governments and the federally backed consortia, data gathered on children at school will be provided to the organizations. As an example of the types of data being sought, is information on student behavior, their attitudes, their persistence, their discipline and so forth — a lot of non-academic things that a lot of parents aren’t comfortable with.
“The real goal is social engineering,” Pullman said. “I don’t like to use explosive sorts of things like that, but this is very obvious — the goal is to create a workforce that responds to the needs of the 21st century, as determined by the central planners.”
Diane Ravitch, a leading education expert who is now a research professor of education at NYU and has been writing about the controversy on her blog, states: “I’m sorry, I think this is madness. Is there a mad scientist or psychologist advising the Gates Foundation? Does Dr. Moreau work in Gates’ lab in Seattle?”
As you can see, Common Core and its proponents are about power; the usurping of your power, the strong-arming of your elected school boards, your power to have a voice in your school’s curriculum, your power to safeguard your children’s privacy, your power to decide what your children are exposed to. We have national tests already, the SATs and ACTs, and both are voluntary. What Common Core is proposing will be compulsory. Common Core seeks a centralized system, a system where a child’s individuality or unique talents and/or weaknesses are of no importance! (“They” know better than you, the parent.) We are a society based on self-governance, state sovereignty and an individual’s rights … not collectivism, socialism or dictatorial decrees. The preservation of our society, and its entire future, is rooted in our children. This fight for our children transcends party lines; it encompasses us as a nation, as one.
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Thanks for your help!
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Actually, some people may not enjoy this post as I do. There are two points in this post that I continually try to make on this blog only to get shot down as if I am making up a conspiracy where there is none.
#1 “The real goal is social engineering,” Pullman said. “I don’t like to use explosive sorts of things like that, but this is very obvious — the goal is to create a workforce that responds to the needs of the 21st century, as determined by the central planners.”
#2 We are a society based on self-governance, state sovereignty and an individual’s rights … not collectivism, socialism or dictatorial decrees.
People seem to be unwilling to look at Bill Gate’s connection and monetary support for UNESCO and their goals of socialism and sustainable development and depopulation. The CC aligned materials peach collectivism and discourage individualism. The United Nations is all about inventory and control including human capital.
The Common Core is the one size fits all system that all students across the globe will be pegged to. Even though inBloom has been disbanded, don’t think for one second that all that data is not being collected and stored anyway. All I can say is that IBM was of great service to Hitler for collecting data and sorting out who should work as slave labor and who should die. Going along with this newest system of sorting is collusion of the worst kind.
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Actually, those old ideas form the basis for our U.S. policies on education and science. President Obama chose John Holdren to be his Science “czar.” Holdren co-authored a book in 1973, with the Ehrlichs, called Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions. In it, he argued: .
“Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature. Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please — and they please to make each new generation larger than the last — yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor.”
Their solution, if you can believe it, was to make everyone poor. They argued that the West should be “de-developed,” by which they meant that countries like the U.S. should have their economies deliberately dismantled and their wealth redistributed to the poor at home and abroad.
In 1968, Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote a well publicized book entitled The Population Bomb . Ehrlich predicted widespread famine and disaster unless population growth was reduced to zero in America and throughout the world by compulsory methods if necessary.
It is funny how Bill Gates espouses these same ideas. He is pretty much Obama’s Education “czar.” Anyway, Bill gives lots of money to the U.N. and especially UNESCO, who he signed an agreement with in 2004, to develop a world-wide curriculum to disseminate the goals of UNESCO using Microsoft as a platform. Five years later the Common Core is born to be delivered and tested on a computer. What are the goals of UNESCO? Population control and sustainable development.
Who was the first Director General of UNESCO? Julian Hiuxley, brother of Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, was the founder of the British Eugenics Society as well.
In 1946 Julian Huxley wrote “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy:”
The moral for Unesco is clear. The task laid upon it of promoting peace and security can never be wholly realised through the means assigned to it – education, science and culture. It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise, as the only certain means for avoiding war. However, world political unity is, unfortunately, a remote ideal, and in any case does not fall within the field of Unesco’s competence. This does not mean that Unesco cannot do a great deal towards promoting peace and security. Specifically, in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarise all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization. But, more generally, it can do a great deal to lay the foundations on which world political unity can later be built. It can help the peoples of the world to mutual understanding and to a realisation of the common humanity and common tasks which they share, as opposed to the nationalisms which too often tend to isolate and separate them.” J.H. p.13
Social Darwinism is alive and well in the U.N. (and therefore in the U.S.)
The Common Core and Sustainable Development are its latest manifestations.
Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros, Prince Phillip and Al Gore are its ardent cheerleaders.
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If you don’t wear shoes that lace up, you can always ask a child to make a bright green rainbow loom bracelet for you! Generally, anything bright green will resonate.
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I don’t think they are a secret any longer. :o)
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I’m buying several pairs of green laces today for myself and my teaching buddies.
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Okay, just added the following to my back-to-school shopping list:
Green shoelaces, many pairs, many shades of green.
Thanks to those lovely folks who came up with this idea!
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Also, just added them to my shopping list for tomorrow.
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Love it. I need to find a green wristband.
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How about a piece of green lace hem facing, crossed and pinned to one’s shirt!
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My new principal just gave us green key holders -you know, the ones to hang your keys around your neck. I thought it was a bit weird because we already had navy blue ones, that fit better with being the Patriots. I think I’ll switch after all.
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I was wondering if anyone else had a problem like mine. My granddaughter, after completing 12 years of school, attended the graduation ceremony and instead of a diploma, was given a certificate of attendance. She was in the Special Needs” classes for Elementary and then had a teacher work with her on the state testing in 6th grade. She took longer than most kids and in turn did not finish the test in time. As such, her scores were not good. My daughter was approached by her teacher in 7th grade with an option to have my granddaughter not need to take these tests. Since my granddaughter was extremely stressed due to these tests, my daughter decided that the teacher was working in their best interests. However, a stipulation of this particular option was that the student will not graduate or receive an official diploma. My daughter was not aware of this fact or she would not have agreed with the teacher.
What upsets me the most is that my granddaughter worked so very hard in class and received wonderful grades. In High School, she was even put in the main stream classes with those in her grade. I have always thought this option was proposed by the teachers for children who they assumed would not do good in the tests. This could lead to a higher percentage for the school district, which seems to be their common goal. .
I think it is very sad that school districts are so willing to put these children’s lives in risk of not being able to go to college and pursue their life choices. I realize that it is this educational program created by the government that forces the school districts and teachers to act accordingly.
If anyone is out there who can help me to research this topic, I would be greatly appreciative. I am attempting to help my granddaughter continue with her education. I have researched many articles and have not seen this one listed. You can email me at susanshultz.226@gmail.com.
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