President and CEO of College Board David Coleman, creator of the Common Core curriculum, speaks during the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow conference in New York on Sept. 17, 2015. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times)

Common Core, Still in Place, Nationalized Educational Quackery

Alex Newman

5 CommentsDecember 24, 2019 Updated: December 26, 2019 The Epoch Times

Perhaps nothing has done more to rouse Americans from their slumber on government education than the so-called Common Core standards, which were quietly imposed on the nation by the leftist Obama administration using tax-funded “bribe” money and arm-twisting. People were furious. Trump called the standards “a total disaster.” But the anger only scratched the surface of the problem.

Despite the public outrage over the dumbed-down standards and the centralization of education in the hands of federally funded elites, the toxic scheme is still firmly entrenched across the United States. Often under new names, the Common Core wreaked havoc on an already dismal education system created by collectivists. The devastation continues, too, as federally funded research on the program has revealed.

The outrage expressed by American voters about this has been intense. In 2014, as the battle was reaching its climax, the annual PDK/Gallup poll on attitudes toward public schools revealed that almost two-thirds of Americans opposed Common Core, while about one third supported it. President Donald Trump ran on a platform of getting rid of it, seizing on that fury to propel him into the White House.

“Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top are all programs that take decisions away from parents and local school boards,” he said. “These programs allow the progressives in the Department of Education to indoctrinate, not educate, our kids. What they are doing does not fit the American model of governance. I am totally against these programs and the Department of Education. It’s a disaster. We cannot continue to fail our children—the very future of this nation.”

He was right, of course. And it was hardly a mystery why that message resonated with so many. Teachers, parents, and taxpayers were all outraged. Common Core had become politically toxic like nothing before in the history of U.S. public education—and for good reason.

First of all, in flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution, the scheme centralizes control over education at the national level. Public surveys reveal that just a tiny fringe minority of Americans—about 15 percent—believe that the federal government ought to dictate what is taught in the classroom. The overwhelming majority believe that local, elected school boards should be in charge.

In part 10 of this series on education, the history behind the federal government’s gradual takeover of education was explored. Common Core, then, wasn’t the beginning of the federalization of education, and it almost certainly won’t be the end. In fact, it’s often been described as just a “symptom” of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

A Mockery of Education

Another major issue with the standards is that Common Core makes a mockery of real education. To understand just how atrocious the standards are from an educational perspective, consider that the only two subject-matter experts on the Common Core Validation Committee both refused to sign off on the scheme.

Dr. Sandra Stotsky, professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas, served as the only English-Language Arts expert on the committee. She vehemently rejected it. One of the biggest problems, she said, is that the Common Core “reduces both literary study and the opportunity for kids to develop critical thinking skills.”

The absurd Common Core “math” standards, meanwhile, have been the subject of endless jokes. But unfortunately, the large-scale handicapping of America’s youth is no laughing matter. The only math expert on the Common Core Validation Committee, Dr. James Milgram of Stanford University, spoke out clearly and forcefully against the standards.

“The Core Mathematics Standards are written to reflect very low expectations,” he explained. “They are as non-challenging as possible with extremely serious failings.” Indeed, there are “actual errors” in some of the math, he said, adding that the standards “are neither mathematically correct nor especially clear.”

Even some of the people who worked on writing the standards have spoken out. Dr. Louisa Moats, an internationally renowned reading expert who served as a contributor to the Common Core’s literacy standards, for instance, has been warning that children will not learn to read properly using the national scheme. “My warnings and protests were ignored at the time,” said Dr. Moats in an interview.

And yet, despite those warnings and many others from leading experts, the educational establishment—backed by endless supplies of federal tax money and billions from Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates—proceeded to impose it on America anyway. Even under the Trump administration, those same standards remain firmly in place.

Marketed as a way to make Americans “college and career ready,” the opposite would have been closer to reality. The ACT standardized test results released this year, for instance, revealed that college-bound students in the United States are doing worse than they have ever done in the ACT examination’s history.

And just as critics warned, American students—already far dumber and less educated than previous generations—have continued to suffer academically as Common Core accelerated the destruction of education. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that over two-thirds of U.S. 8th graders are not even proficient in any core subject.

The federal government knows this well, too. In a federally funded study by the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) released this year, researchers found results they did not expect. In short, the investigation concluded that Common Core produced “significant negative effects” in both English and math. “The magnitude of the negative effects [of Common Core] tend to increase over time,” added Mengli Song, one of the researchers involved.

Alex Neuman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.” He also serves as the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media and writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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