The school choice journey: Parents experiencing more than improved test scores
No Politico, Common Core Hasn't “Won the War_
1. 11/10/2015 No Politico, Common Core Hasn't “Won the War"
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/2015/20151109a.asp 1/2
Andrew Mullins has been
deputy director of Federal
Relations since 2014.
Lauren Mitchell is a
legislative assistant for
Federal Relations.
November 9, 2015
No Politico, Common Core Hasn’t “Won the War”
Andrew Mullins
Deputy Director, HSLDA Federal Relations
Lauren Mitchell
Legislative Assistant, HSLDA Federal Relations
In a recent article, Politico’s Kimberly Hefling asserted
that “Common Core has won.” She claims that Common
Core enjoys widespread support, and interviews select
groups of parents and teachers in an attempt to prove
that teachers and students have “given up” on the battle
against this legislative behemoth.
But this article overlooks some crucial numbers. It
ignores the fact that the movement against Common
Core is one of the fastest‐growing grassroots efforts in
the United States, with almost a quarter million students
opting out in the state of California alone, and another
quarter million students expected to stage protests in
New York. Similar outrage is shared nationwide, as state
after state discovers the damage that these standards
have caused.
Missing Facts
While Ms. Hefling may have interviewed some pockets of
support to back her thesis, her research has somehow
missed the millions of Common Core opponents. She must
not have talked to the same students that Stephen
Colbert mentioned in his hilarious ambush on the
absurdity of the standards—or the tens of thousands of
parents around the country like this one, whose
frustration with the standards finally turned into
cynicism. The article barely even mentions the “droves”
of parents who are opting their frustrated kids out of the
tests. It doesn’t address the fact that homeschooling is
expected to skyrocket with the new surge of students
fleeing the public schools. And while some families are
contemplating moving out of their home state just to get
away from the Common Core, Politico fails to mention
the impact that Common Core is having on the average,
middle‐class family.
While the standards themselves are questionable (after all, they were developed in eight months by corporate
interest holders and bureaucrats, with little or no input from teachers or education experts), that’s only the tip of
the iceberg. Incentivized by Race to the Top grants and waivers to No Child Left Behind, over 40 post‐recession,
cash‐needy states hurriedly adopted the Common Core in 2010. (Some adopted the standards before they were
even finalized.) The resulting Gordian knot of issues has included student privacy violations, data mining, intrusion
into parental school choice, and a lawsuit against a regretful governor.
At its root, a critical flaw within Common Core is that it proposes a big government answer to the question of who
should be teaching our next generation of students. Since before the founding of our nation, education was left to
state and local governments. Under that system, literacy, employment, and innovation thrived, as parents and
townships were attuned to the needs of the students in their communities.
From the Top
That changed when federal involvement in education exploded in the 20th century. The federal government took
an ever‐expanding, top‐down approach to education control, combined it with a state reliance on federal dollars,
and created a model for centralized tinkering in education. Our students have been paying the price for this
flawed approach ever since.
Now, in 2015 America, parents and teachers have had enough. In the past four legislative years since the Common
Core was widely adopted, 28 states have pulled out of the testing consortia, and another 10 states rejected
Common Core altogether. If the massive pushback against Common Core wasn’t evidence enough, the five states
that were smart enough to pass on the standards have shown little to no interest in changing their minds.
Apparently these states, and the hundreds of anti‐Common Core representatives within them, never found the “big
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