Letter: Common Core not what it claims to be

Joseph Ryan
St Augustine, FL

Dear Editor:

If common core was really what it claimed to be, there would be little opposition to it. However, they are not common, not core, and not state led and not only standards.

Although It is not unusual for bills and organizations to have deceitful names, and it would not be on the list as one of the top ten list of reasons to oppose common core, we should stop letting the supporters of common core use the name with impunity.

They need to be called out on the hypocrisy of what will go down as the biggest scam in the history of education.

• The Common Core State Standards are not common and never have been. They are new and untested, and probably will fail as they have in New York, the first state that has fully implemented them. They are designed to be new and different. If the creators of common core wanted common, good, and tested standards they could have selected the best parts of existing standards. But they did not. They changed the way math was taught and they drastically altered what text is used in the ELA standards. Common core is so uncommon that it requires all new “aligned” text books. Digital ones that no parent will ever see. A good thing for the text book companies who backed common core, but bad for school districts that have to pay for them?

• The Common Core State Standards are not core. The word core implies something that is the most basic or the most important part of the whole. However, the creators of common core say that they are much better and more rigorous than almost every State’s existing standards. Because the high stakes testing will only be on the common core standards, they will replace all the existing standards. For that to work, common core must not be just a core, but the complete standard, rendering it either dumbed down complete standards or core standards so unwieldy that everyone will fail it. This is exactly what New York experienced.

• The Common Core State Standards Not State. No one who created common core had any legislative authority to do so. They were created by two trade organizations that lobby State government officials on behalf of their donors and business partners. The standards were developed and funded by private education vendors for profit and the Federal Government for control. If the Obama administrated had not baited the standards with Race to the Top money and they actually had to go through a normal vetting procedure they would be forgotten by now.

• These standards are not just standards. They were never meant to be. They were meant to force a new curriculum on every state. The adoption of these new and strange standards as a condition of the RTTT money also mandated a data tracking of every individual student, new computer based assessments and accreditation, text books and teacher evaluations. Local districts will be able to choose any curriculum they please as long as it’s aligned with common core, uses common core aligned teaching material, and passes the evaluation process done by EDuiP a subsidiary of the already mentioned Achieve Inc. The creators of common core and the paid spokesmen for common core admit that common core would force a change of curriculum and even to get rid of local district altogether.

If common core state standards are not what their creators say they are, then what are they for? You could follow the money by looking at the corporate partners and donors to the companies that created common core. CCSSO, the NGA, and Achieve Inc or the backers of the two testing consortia, PARCC and SBAC, and you will see the names of the corporations receiving massive payouts from your state.

The Federal Government has it’s reasons to want the measure and change our children’s attitudes and beliefs. It is all about control, as The Heartland Institutes Policy brief says “The notorious Russian communist Vladimir Lenin knew the power of controlling schools. He once said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.””

Lastly there may an even bigger and more sinister reason for common core that I found in an Article called Common Core Goes Global . In the article there is a quote by Abraham Lincoln that sums up what is really at stake, even for those without children in school “The philosophy in the school room in one generation will become the philosophy of government in the next. “ The danger is real, it is here. Please do not let the concept that founded this greatest of all nations be expunged from history.