J. D. Heyes
Natural
News
May 3, 2013
Whenever he can, President Obama likes to poke fun at anyone who suggests
that he’s a closet socialist because that’s what socialists do – they ridicule
anyone who tries to “out” them. And yet, every policy he pursues takes a page
right out of the socialist/Marxist playbook, and one of them is to ensure that
the government controls all forms of education.
Right now, of course, there are thousands of private schools and institutions
of higher learning in the U.S., so the government doesn’t control all
education, per se. But left-wing career education bureaucrats in government,
along with compliant socialists in the teachers unions, do indeed control the
vast majority of primary public school education, and it is here where the Obama
regime is consolidating its control through a Department of Education
program known as Common Core State Standards .
‘Inappropriate overreach’
From the Common Core website:
The standards clearly communicate what is expected of students at each
grade level. This will allow our teachers to be better equipped to know exactly
what they need to help students learn and establish individualized benchmarks
for them. The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual
understandings and procedures starting in the early grades…
Essentially, what Common Core consists of is a standardized block of
instruction on all the major subjects – Math, English and Language Arts – per standards that government
bureaucrats devised. Initially, 45 states and the District of Columbia signed
on, but as more states found out the curriculum is decidedly slanted to
a particular point of view (socialism), a number of
states are now working on legislation to bail out. And they are designed to
allow controlling statists to get their claws into your kids as early on in
their academic careers as possible.
New legislation introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would prohibit
federal funds from being used to finance Common Core implementation around the
country. He has also introduced criticized the CCSS, calling them an
“inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children.”
He’s far from being alone in rejecting the CCSS. According to an assessment
of the core by the Washington Policy Center, scores of education
experts have also rejected them, saying one of the biggest problems with the
program is that it will stifle classroom innovation, which comes primarily from
individual states.
“Local control of public school curriculum and instruction
has historically driven innovation and reform in education. A one-size-fits-all,
centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject threatens to close the
door on educational innovation, freezing in place an unacceptable status quo and
hindering efforts to develop academically rigorous curricula, assessments, and
standards that meet the challenges that lie ahead,” says an assessment of CCSS
by the center.
In addition to rejection of the standards by federal lawmakers, many states
are considering or have introduced measures to repeal the standards.
SB403, introduced by Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason, “would prohibit the
State Board of Education from adopting and the Department of Education
from implementing the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core
State Standards Initiative,” says a summary. “The bill would also prohibit the
State Board of Education, the Department of Education, and other state
bodies from compiling or sharing data about students or teachers, except under
limited circumstances.”
No state development or involvement
In Indiana, HB1427 states, “The state board may not continue to implement as
standards for the state or direct the department to implement any common core
standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative…The
legislative council shall establish a legislative study committee to study
issues relating to common
core standards.”
Similar legislation has been introduced in Missouri as well.
The Obama Administration is claiming the standards were developed by the
states but, according to Diane Ravitch, a former assistant U.S. secretary of
education who was appointed to office by both Clinton and George H.W. Bush,
that’s a bogus claim.
The standards “were developed by an organization called Achieve and the
National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the
Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the
Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the
states,” she writes in the Washington Post.
Sources:
http://republicanstates.wordpress.com/tag/common-core/
http://people.howstuffworks.com/communism1.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpolicy.org
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