The Travesty Called Common Core

The following essay is Part I of IV parts on 

Common Core.  

This was written by my friend Gamaliel Isaac.

Through my many years of research regarding educational issues;   I have witnessed the progress of the changing of our culture through the schools.   Many leaders believe that our nation needs to be changed from a Republic with freedom from the government to a Socialist/Communist nation where everyone is controlled by the government.   In order to accomplish this they needed to start with the children in the schools.    The people in charge knew that most people "trusted" the teachers in the schools.   After all,  just about everyone had a teacher in their family or at least knew a teacher.   What most people didn't know was that the "teachers" had been indoctrinated.

The leaders have gradually dumbed down the curriculum and injected the philosophy of the left by progressively changing the values, beliefs and behavior of our students on a daily basis.   Before "Common Core" there was a program called "Values Clarification."   This was the teaching of the Religion of Secular Humanism in the classroom.   It is and was taught in the classroom on a daily basis in every grade level.  Now we have the final step.  It is called COMMON CORE.

  

This article is about the travesty called the Common Core Standards.  Its design began before Obama was elected but I and others refer to it as Obamacore because Obama played a major role in imposing it on the country, and like Obamacare it was passed without being read, and it involves centralized data collection of private information.  States across the U.S. signed on to Obamacore because they were bribed with stimulus funds.  As parents became aware of the changes that were made to their children’s education many joined organizations to oppose it.  Many insightful and alarming critiques have been written regarding the danger of Common Core.  There are fears that Common Core is paving the way for indoctrination of American students by centralizing control of education, collecting massive amount of data on students, and telling teachers what they must and must not teach.  There are reports that scores have dropped when the Common Core was adopted and that a curriculum designed to meet the Common Core standards would only prepare students for entry level courses in nonselective community colleges. 

James Milgram, the only mathematician in the Common Core validation committee , refused to sign off on the math standards.  He said that Common Core math standards would put students two years behind those of high-achieving countries.  He told the Texas state legislature that Common Core standards are, “in large measure a political document that . . . is written at a very low level and does not adequately reflect our current understanding of why the math programs in the high-achieving countries give dramatically better results.” 

He said:  “I had considerable influence on the mathematics standards in the document. However, as is often the case, there was input from many other sources -- including State Departments of Education -- that had to be incorporated into the standards…  A number of these sources were mainly focused on things like making the standards as non-challenging as possible. Others were focused on making sure their favorite topics were present, and handled in the way they liked.”

Dr. Milgram added that it led to a number of “extremely serious failings” in the Common Core that made it premature for any state hoping to improve math scores to implement them and that the Core Math standards were designed to reflect very low expectations.

          The Common Core standards are low compared to those of high achieving countries but a study by the Thomas Fordham Institute found that the Common Core English standards are higher than those of 37 states and the math standards are higher than those of 39 states.  The reason for this is that states dumbed down their minimum standards so they could show they were meeting their standards and get No Child Left Behind money.  Previously it was easy for a school to exceed the minimum state standards.  Common Core imposes a low level curriculum on schools which dictate what to teach and what not to teach.  

Why are the standards of Common Core low when the ostensible purpose of Common Core is to raise the performance of American students?  One can find the answer in a document by the American Federation of Teachers which states that one of the goals of Common Core is to “close the intolerable achievement gap between minority and non-minority students.”  It’s much easier to close the gap by lowering standards than to raise the performance of poorly performing students and no teacher or school administrator wants to be in the position where their jobs depend on getting students to perform. 

There are ideological reasons to lower standards as well.  Common Core instructions tell teachers to “avoid giving any background context” to texts on the grounds that Common Core’s close reading strategy “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all.” 

The ideology reason given above is to level the playing field although the argument that leaving out background information will somehow do that is ridiculous.  Those making that argument should be going to school instead of designing a curriculum for schools.

Common Core tests do not emphasize getting the right answer.  Instead they focus on essay questions, which makes possible grading in such a way that underperforming minority groups score as well as high performing groups. 

The other goal of Common Core stated by the American Federation of Teachers is to help American students compete in the global economy.  That raises the question “Is the reason for America’s poor economic performance low standards?” 

Tomorrow Part II