Summary of Common Core

TEA New York – by Jul Thompson

Common Core is a new set of substandard educational standards the federal government has coerced and bribed states to adopt.  Its totalitarian goal is to nationalize education so as to mold the minds of the youth, with the end goal of dominating the population.  46 States had originally adopted Common Core, but as of 2014, Oklahoma, Indiana and South Carolina have withdrawn.  It was never adopted by Nebraska, Virginia, Texas and Alaska.  

A universal set of standards looks good on its face, but not only does federal control of education violate the 10^th Amendment assuring us that powers not delegated to the Fed are reserved to the States or to the people,  the devil is in the horrendous details.  It is designed to teach students what to think, not how to think.  Control is the goal.  “The goal is not education but the production of compliant, dependent, uneducated citizens”* which not surprisingly, is the same citizenry needed to implement Agenda 21. Common Core aims to centralize every aspect of public and private education into the hands of a few national bureaucrats, eliminating input from parents, teachers and local school boards.  The National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) has hopped on board and even Homeschoolers are not immune, as many companies that develop homeschool curricula are conforming their programs and curricula to the Common Core scheme.

The standards are poor and have been described as “shallow and generic” according to social studies teacher Gerald Conti of New York.  Conti’s resignation letter has gone viral, in which he says “Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education.”  Its top-down, one-size-fits-all model will most certainly not improve outcomes or increase academic excellence, but dumb down future generations.

Sometimes known as ObamaCore, an effort was made to avoid a national outcry by focusing on the less controversial subjects, Math and English, but the curricula has been criticized as being woefully inadequate.

• English & Language Arts
  The emphasis is on dry, technical reading and informational texts instead of literary classics, which educators recognize as essential to developing critical thinking skills. Among suggested reading is the government document “Recommended Levels of Insulation” (by the US EPA, Dept of Energy or Executive Order 13423). An estimated 60% of classic literature, poetry and drama have been stripped from the standards.
• Mathematics
  Many states have had to lower expectations to comply with Common Core standards. According to Stanford professor and member of the Common Core Validation Committee (which was created in an attempt to lend validity and authority to Common Core) Dr. James Milgram has said the math standards are written to reflect very low expectations, calling them “as non-challenging as possible” with “extremely serious failings.” He has pointed to actual errors in 6^th and 7^th grade level lessons on ratios and rates, which are “neither mathematically correct nor especially clear.”
• History
  Suggested reading is “A History of the US” by Joy Hakim, which includes errors of fact, chronology and terminology, and contains “falsehoods” and “extreme exhibitions of [liberal] bias,” according to author and historian Alice Whealey in an analysis for the Textbook League, which reviews textbooks for accuracy.
• Science
  Known as the “Next Generation Science Standards,” it teaches “controversial propaganda on everything from the theory of evolution to largely debunked theories advanced by UN global-warming alarmists about supposed human impacts on ‘climate change,’ critics say.”* The elementary school standards actually claim “Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming)” despite evidence to the contrary, enormous disagreement within the scientific community and that CO2 from fossil fuels represent a tiny fraction of greenhouse gases naturally occurring in the atmosphere.

One of the most troubling aspects of Common Core is the gathering of data on students by monitoring and tracking everything from biometric data to children’s beliefs, family makeup, mental health issues, and the legal possession of firearms among other things.  The Orwellian nightmare goes on with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan purporting to overrule federal privacy laws, and any outrage falls on deaf ears.

So with significantly reduced standards, misinformation, having no constitutional authority to impose this scheme upon the states, one wonders from whence it all stemmed.  It began with the creation of the US Department of Education during the Carter Administration in 1979, picked up steam in the 90’s with establishment governors and corporate titans pushing for centralization under the guise of improving standards, and then in 1996, Achieve Inc. was born, which further eroded state and local control through “public-private partnerships.”  It is chaired by former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner Jr, a prominent member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Bilderberg summit attendee.  Gerstner recommended among other things to “abolish all local school districts” and “establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum.” Then in 2009, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers – both non-profits despite official sounding names, hand-picked some “experts’ and set to work drafting up a scheme to nationalize education.  The Obama Administration then offered stimulus money to the States in exchange for agreeing to adopt the standards, and many states accepted the bribe without legislative approval, and before the standards were even written.

By parroting “state-led” and “voluntary,” proponents believe they have skirted multiple federal laws prohibiting federal direction or control of curricula, but this is clearly bunk. No legislators had any significant role in developing the scheme, states agreed to it before it was published to be eligible for the bribes and clearly, “Common Core is a set of nationalstandards pushed by the federal government and created by “consultants” funded by unaccountable billionaires.”*

According to The New American, Common Core is a “national education system run from the shadows by unaccountable forces that will ultimately capture the minds of America’s youth at an early age.”* Those unaccountable forces include the Rockefeller-allied billionaire Bill Gates who has a sordid history of funding population control, pro-abortion forces and other nefarious UN schemes.  The Gates Foundation even received an award from the UN Population Fund, who was exposed for facilitating the Chi-Com’s barbaric one-child policy and coerced abortions. Special interest groups have participated in creating the standards, including the abortion giant Planned Parenthood, who assisted with the “National Sexuality Education Standards” and who will be given ongoing access to American children.  Common Core is copyrighted as well, and as such, it cannot be altered by anyone but the owners.  Only special interest groups finding favor with the owners will be allowed to provide input.

The good news is Common Core is opposed by Liberals and Conservatives alike, and the opposition is gaining steam.  The Cato Institute, the Brookings Institution and even Big Labor and the ACLU have voiced opposition.  In New York State, We the People NY Inc. has formed a coalition of reform groups across the State to bring a number of Resolutions to their County Legislatures or Board of Supervisors, to Town Boards and Councils and to School Boards.  The goal is to have these Boards pass the Resolutions** opposing Common Core based on the numerous ways in which it violates the State and US Constitutions.  For legislators to not do so would be to violate their oaths of office to protect and defend the constitution.

*The New American, Aug 2013.
** http://wethepeopleofny.org/community/index.php?/topic/140-2015-ny-state-education-campaign-stop-common-core-restore-civic-education/

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