Information About (Against) the Common Core

I have been desiring to start gathering information about the Common Core curriculum for months now, seeking a pocket of time in which to do it. I have strong reservations about this latest-and-greatest educational reform from the federal government (regardless of party in power).

I don't know when such a pocket of time is going to come available, so I am simply going to start a post to which I add links of other articles and videos. As I come across more (and I seem to come across them at least weekly), I will add them to this post. Readers are encouraged to add resources in the comments section. From what I have learned so far, I am concerned, so it is from that perspective that I am providing information but I would certainly be relieved to be proven wrong, so please feel free to reply with all information.

Why do I care, since we homeschool our children anyway?

1. I don't know that our right to homeschool will always be protected. Some day, the law may require us to allow the government to educate our children.

2. I want American citizens to be well-educated. I want our economy to be strong and our government to be guided well by the citizenry, both of which aims require people to be well-educated.

3. Even many homeschool curricula are choosing to align to the Common Core curriculum, so it does affect us directly. (Check this website to see which curriculum provider is aligned, which is not.) We must assume that the standardized tests required for entrance into college or for application for scholarships will be aligned to the Common Core soon.

4. My understanding is that a program rolling out simultaneously with the Common Core curriculum now allows for data collection about our children and attached to their individual names--a practice from which our children were previously protected but which I believe has now been overruled by a presidential order. That means children in "Common Core states" are now having data collected about them and put into files with their names on them. Frankly, whether the data is "creepy" or not, I feel my rights being eroded, and not slowly, when the government is storing data files by name about my children.

5. I have serious concerns about the federal government controlling the education of our children. I don't want our state public schools to feel that they have no choice but to accept federal rules, standards, or anything in order to receive federal money, that they somehow can't survive without that money.

A movie review of Superman, General Zod and God gave me food for thought about utopias and totalitarianism, which I think easily relates to the Common Core.

"In his classic "The Open Society and Its Enemies," Karl Popper, a survivor of Nazy tyranny, presented Plato's Republic as the forerunner of all totalitarianisms that have sprung up in the West. Very often, Popper saw, these tyrannies begin with the best of intentions. Good-hearted leaders believe that they have hit upon some form of life that will benefit the greatest number and thus they endeavor to implement their vision through binding legal prescription."

Sources last updated: January 11, 2014

Dr. Everett Pipe, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University (28-minute video)

One Mom's Opinion: Why We're Homeschooling This Year

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth (15-minute video)

What Is the Common Core of State Standards? by  Ginny Seuffert (the cost of buying these 34 homeschooling conference talks is worth Mrs. Seuffert's talk alone on the Common Core: "Public Education and the Necessity of Homeschooling")

"Biometric Mood Bracelets To Be Used in Chicago Classrooms"

"New Gates History Curriculum Closes Young Minds to God"

"My Conversation with the Leader of Common Core" by Michael Farris, HSLDA (very respectful)

The HSLDA's own website dedicated to Common Core Issues (this website looks extremely meaty and supported by a plethora of footnotes, I hope to read through this in depth, which will require a lot of time on my part)

"10th Grade Class Reads Erotic Novel Recommended by Common Core Proponents" [note: children should not click on this link to read through]

"Top Ten Professors Calling Out Common Core's So-Called College Readiness"

"Common Core: A Threat to Catholic Education" by Phyllis Schlafly

"Common Core Assessment Myths and Realities: Moratorium Needed from More Tests, Costs, Stress"

"What Homeschoolers Need to Know About Common Core" by Maureen Whitmann

October 16, 2013, Letter from 132 Catholic professors to each Catholic bishop in the United States

"Common Core Education vs. Classical Education: A Thomistic Approach" by Sean Fitzpatrick

First Teachers . . . "Common Core: Pro and Con" by James K. Fitzpatrick (The Wanderer newspaper, July 18, 2013)

Over the past year or so, correspondents to First Teachers have been nearto-unanimous in their opposition to the so-called Common Core, the federally mandated standards for our elementary and high schools. Lamar Alexander, the U.S. senator from Tennessee and ranking member on the Senate Committee
on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, made the case heard most often by those opposed to Common
Core in a June 11 column on National Review Online. He argued that “the U.S. Department of Education has become so congested with federal mandates that it has become, in effect, a national school board.” States are left with no choice but to “come to Washington to get approval for their plans,” thereby putting federal authorities in charge of “the education of 50 million students in 100,000 public schools.” He compares the current situation of the childhood game “Mother, May I?” — with the federal government in the role of the mother.

Alexander argues that the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs are the root of the problem. They give the secretary of education the power to withhold grant money to the states unless they “adopt Common Core standards for their students in reading and math.” Common Core also mandates
four “turnaround models” for schools judged to be failing by the federal authorities, complete with “prescriptive teacher and principal evaluation plans.”

Alexander points out that Republicans are offering an alternative to the current Common Core model, one that will restore “responsibility to the states and communities” and “give teachers and parents freedom, flexibility, and choice.” It is a plan, says Alexander, that “emphasizes state and local decisionmaking.
It takes Washington out of the business of deciding where local schools are succeeding or failing,” one that “rejects the federal mandates that effectively created a national school board, prohibiting
the secretary of education from prescribing standards or accountability systems for states.”

He argues that the Democrats’ approach, in contrast, “establishes, in effect, a national school board. Such a
proposal suggests they don’t trust parents, classroom teachers, and states to care about and help educate their children.” Conservatives and those with traditional values argue the “national school board” that Alexander is describing will become a tool to impose secular liberal values upon the country, a way for the
liberal elites to shape the country along their preferred ideological lines. One can appreciate the origins of this fear, as news reports of schools introducing a curriculum that emphasizes the values of the sexual revolution and the homosexual agenda become ever more routine.

Most correspondents to First Teachers find this a rational fear. And it well may be. Even so, those who oppose Common Core owe it to themselves to get a clear view of the views of those who favor this federal program, if for no other reason than to reject it intelligently. We don’t want to be in the position
of arguing against proverbial straw men. Edward L. Glaeser, a Harvard economist, recently wrote a column that appeared in many papers around the country. Glaeser serves on the Gates Foundation’s domestic program, a prominent supporter of Common Core. He argues the critics of Common Core — everyone “from Glenn Beck to Diane Ravitch — misunderstand what Common Core does.” Glaeser maintains Common Core “will not radically change our schools — but will make it easier to evaluate future curricular innovations.” He insists that the fear of a “nationwide curriculum” is a “terrifying but phantom
bogeyman. No one is seriously proposing it.”

Glaeser assures us that he has “yet to hear anyone suggest that the U.S. Department of Education should dictate what is taught in every American classroom” in all his meetings with the Gates Foundation and other supporters of Common Core. He insists that the goal of those who support Common Core is a “matter of testing, not curriculum.” He asks, “How can we know where to invest, if we can’t measure failure or success?”

Glaeser characterizes “the movement against the Common Core” as one that is “partially fueled by a suspicion of federal intrusion into traditionally local functions.” But, he insists, “some federal interventions
are helpful. The increases in math and science education that followed the famous Reagan-era ‘A Nation
at Risk’ report significantly increased earnings for African-American males.”

What of the fears of a secular leftist curriculum being imposed on local school districts? Glaeser insists that none “of these concerns should worry us, as long as the Common Core is limited to a common national test. In fact, test-taking is an invaluable part of the learning process” and the cost of implementing
the tests “are small relative to the overall cost of education or the benefits of improving our schools.”

Glaeser then proceeds to make a point that many on the right will find it difficult to accept. Glaeser is aware that Glenn Beck believes that Common Core “will invite greater and greater indoctrination and bias.” But Glaeser insists that Common Core includes “no requirement to slip in leftist indoctrination
or cut great books. Indeed, the English standards mention Shakespeare, Ovid, and the Bible.”

What of the fear that a standardized national test “will distort course instruction,” the familiar argument that it will encourage teachers to “teach to the test”? Glaeser concedes that “these fears are not baseless.” He points to states that have “offered detailed curriculum frameworks targeted toward Common
Core tests.” But he insists “these frameworks are voluntary, and school districts and teachers can readily
choose to include more or different material, if they think it will produce better results.” Glaeser’s bottom line:
“Performance on a common test will help evaluate which curricula are most effective, which is why the Common Core test will do the most good when individual states and districts experiment widely.”

Is Glaeser pulling the wool over our eyes in an effort to sell Common Core? Or is he a well-intentioned man
who is failing to foresee how the power being given to the Department of Education by Common Core will inevitably be abused by liberal bureaucrats and “educationists”? Or might he be correct, and those who fear a sinister design behind Common Core be overreacting? We welcome our readers’ responses.

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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.