Common Core- Why It Matters

re: what you don't know about what your kids don't know- can and will hurt you

The Truth About Common Core- A Moneymaking Scheme That Will Leave You And Your Kids A Lot Poorer, Stripped of Your Privacy (And A Lot Less Educated As Well!)

The stakes are enormous. Dr. Carla Horwitz of the Yale Child Study Center notes that many of our most experienced and gifted teachers of young children are giving up in despair. “They are leaving the profession,” says Horwitz, “because they can no longer do what they know will ensure learning and growth in the broadest, deepest way. 
The Core Standards will cause suffering, not learning, for many, many young children.”

By Tammy de Leeuw and 

Teresa Kuhn, JD, RFC, CSA

Living Wealthy Radio.Com

  

Part 1: The Beast That Is Common Core

While we lay sleeping, 46 formerly autonomous states took the king’s schilling and sold their citizens and their kids down a treacherous river called “Common Core.”

If you don’t know much about Common Core other than perhaps your school age child bringing home a slip announcing that your district is “aligned” with the new Common Core standards, then you are not alone.  By some estimates, nearly 80% of parents surveyed said they knew little to NOTHING about this dramatic shift in the way our children are being educated.

Eyes glued to the giant money-flavored carrot dangled before them in the form of a contest called “Race to the Top”,  states desperate to plug budget shortfalls didn’t stop to think about the long term costs of winning such a race. 

Nor did they operate transparently and allow their citizens to really understand what they were relinquishing in order to get those funds.

 

Instead, in an operation as opaque as muddy water in a black bucket at midnight, a massive, costly overhaul of our education standards was undertaken without the knowledge or input of either teachers or parents. 

Most parents and many educators and administrators were caught off guard.  Even if they knew about Common Core, they dismissed it and its’ far-reaching implications as yet another one of those miracle programs designed to fix what really isn’t broken. (think “No Child Left Behind, etc.)

One is tempted, after reading the stated objectives of Common Core, to declare its basic premise essentially logical.  One of the goals of Common Core according to its’ proponents, is to get all the states on the same page when it comes to curriculum so that if Johnny moves from State A to State B, he won’t be too far behind (or ahead).

Reformers insist that centralization and uniformity will create a magic elixir that will fix America’s bad test scores and help our country become strong again.

“America is lagging behind other countries- we need to be centralized in our education so we can catch up, etc. etc.”   It’s the sales pitch of Common Core’s backers, many of whom it turns out, have little to no background in education and who may have some not-so-hidden agendas.

As a parent myself, I was skeptical about the reasons for implementing this sweeping change education in the United States, asking if the statistics being tossed out by reformers were accurate and if the system is really so broken as to need such a radical and costly overhaul.

Is this just another power grab by the Federal government designed to take away school choice and Constitutionally-protected authority from the states by effectively doing away with local school boards?

I think that, after carefully examining what I have to say here, along with doing your own research and evaluation, you will easily conclude that, at its very best, Common Core is a taxpayer financed revenue-generating scheme set to benefit an elite cadre of corporations and private individuals.   

At its worst- it is a sinister hybrid- part dumbed-down social experiment and part cash-generator, concocted by ideologues and corporatists who want to control students from cradle to grave, systematically strip them of their privacy, individuality, and voices. 

 

What then, is the REAL purpose for engaging in such a radical, highly-experimental, and ultimately costly (just wait until you see the bill for this one!) program that strips states, teachers, and parents of their right to have input into the education of their children?

Who exactly is behind Common Core and what do those who support it stand to gain?  More importantly, what is every parent and child set to lose… possibly forever?

 

(stay tuned for part 2)