The United States Senate will soon begin debate on a bill to get the federal government out of our local classrooms by permanently ending Washington’s mandate on Common Core.
Common Core started out as a state-led effort to create high standards that states would voluntarily adopt, but the Obama administration had different ideas. It disrupted that process by forcing states to adopt the standards, first through Race to the Top grants, and next through waivers. Waivers from onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind are granted only to states that agree to implement the White House’s preferred education policies — Common Core.
It says a lot when even The New York Times refers to the waiver process as “the most sweeping use of executive authority to rewrite federal education law since Washington expanded its involvement in education in the 1960s.”
The Senate’s bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Language I fought to include in this bill will, once and for all, end the Obama administration’s use of waivers to force or incentivize states to adopt Common Core standards.
And it will end the Obama administration’s — and, for that matter, any future administration’s — ability to use any tool of coercion to force states to adopt Common Core — or any set of standards at all, whether it’s Common Core by another name or some new set of standards. Period.
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What exactly is the purpose of Common Core?
ReplyDeleteDear 11:20 a.m. - Ask Jeb Bush about this - He was in bed with Pearson, a private testing company that made in excess of 135 BILLION last year alone...since that became public, Mr. Bush has distanced himself from the company where I believe he sat as a board member. He took this action prior to announcing his presidential intentions, and did so expediently given the collapse of support for the Common Core. originally the common core was proposed to increase thinking and problem solving ability within a very rigorous set of state standards and a national exam that would measure academic progress accurately no matter if you were a student in Maine or California. The federal government got involved when Obama saw an opportunity to control this, and the Gates foundation funded it as it is illegal for this to be done so by the Federal government. The only problem is that from the ridiculous (and inappropriate) standards that were not child centered, and not put together by education professionals on the front lines - The ACT and the college board both headed a list of professionals with a clear agenda that did not include a teacher on the panel (correction, there was actually 1 elementary teacher consulted for one portion of the math piece). To answer succinctly, the Common Core was proposed as a way to make students think more creatively and more efficiently as well as leveling the playing field for minorities (or so promoted the esteemed Dr. Handy, who touted this widely - whoopsie Margo). What it actually created was a private corporation making a lot of money off of a federal mandate supported by states (never mind that they were bullied into compliance) Unfortunately, the administration and architects of this fiasco neglected to understand that students are not automatons, as well as failing to predict the back lash that is occurring by the opt out movement.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Paladin
We had to find some test certain groups of students might have a chance of passing. We're still hunting.
ReplyDelete