Common Core: Another Response to a Another False Crisis ...

Every strong institution needs a reliable foundation. ?The Common Core State Standards initiative was designed to be such a foundation; the institution, which rests upon it, is the corporate takeover of public schools.

The institution of corporate school reform may look like a silent coup, but it?s been well planned for and experimented with for a while now. ?And it?s been shaky. ?Until now.

Academic standards in public schools are not new by any means. ?National standards, however, are something that many people feared (especially conservatives), and which took the powers of Federal mandate to make happen.

Under Reagan, a false crisis was created in education during a recession and an economically booming Japan. ?It was during this scare that corporate lobbies were able to convince the public and the government that accountability was necessary to give America the educational edge it needed. ?Standardized tests, of course, were considered the only scientifically reliable system to accomplish this. ?

During the GOP surge in the House in 1994, several facets of Federal education control were scrapped, but Clinton was able to hold on to several accountability measures (standardized tests) in order to measure the success of Title I initiatives. ?During this time, it was noticed that ?the achievement gap? was growing, despite the best efforts of healthcare and educational measures, and this set the stage for No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Luckily for test and textbook publishers and their friends, George W. Bush was all too happy to ?reach across the aisle? to enact sweeping education reform to boost school accountability and student progress tracking systems. ?Contrary to a ?small government? philosophy, the neoconservative Executive Branch, in one stroke of Bush?s pen, nationalized education. ?Effectively, if states wanted Title I funds from the Federal government, they were required to show adequate yearly progress (AYP) for all students. ?If they didn?t they could lose that funding, or worse, lose the failing schools.

Image Credit: Big Education APE

Teachers, who were busy preparing their students for life and college, finally spoke up. ?Partisan politics played a part in feigning concern. ?Secretary of Education under President Obama, Arne Duncan, told us all he was listening and started the infamous waiver program. ?He said he agreed that the ?one-size-fits-all? NCLB was failing and that states could show AYP in a different manner than prescribed under the old law.

Superman had come to town. ?He has many names. Arne Duncan. Michelle Rhee. David Coleman. Joel Klein. ALEC. Sam Walton. Bill Gates. Eli Broad. Yes, even Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, for all of us, the new alternative is much, much worse. ?Race to the Top started a new game. ?Instead of proving progress for funding, the waived states competed for it by drafting educational plans for improvement, which had to follow very strict guidelines. ?One of those guidelines was the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, which had already been drafted by two groups with strong political and corporate ties by 2009, and which were released in 2010. ?(The government and corporate group responsible for starting the movement started work to nationalize standards as early as 1996).

So, accountability has taken a new turn. ?States that have adopted the Common Core and are locked into the testing requirements are accountable to the Federal government. ?Local school districts therefore are required to relinquish their decision-making to the state level. ?And all states are required to prove proficiency using scores from a growing battery of tests. ? All students, in all schools, from all states must show measurable growth and proficiency, using overly objective standards and unrealistic benchmarks in order to stay in business. ?The rules of the ?old school? law (NCLB) still apply when it comes to failing schools, which include sanctions, up to and including reorganization, closing, or sale to private corporations.

This is why Common Core is so bad for our country. ?It has put almost all control of public education in the hands of the Federal government, rather than democratically at the local level. ?The Common Core is the foundation of a larger movement that is profiting from a false crisis in America. ?The privatizers and testing companies were waiting in the wings for this. ?The Federal government has set unrealistic goals, the testing companies are providing unrealistic metrics, and the corporations and investors in private charters are waiting to claim their prizes. ?All of this at the expense of poor, mostly minority students. ?And the timing was impeccable: all three parts of this movement (Federal government, testing corporations, and privatizers) came together in perfect harmony to take advantage of a constructed crisis.

All of this work, all of this planning, while intentionally ignoring the real cause of failing schools. ?Unfortunately, President Johnson?s ?War on Poverty? died long ago. ?And as we know now (yet continue to debate), poverty has the biggest measurable effect on educational achievement. ?And even worse, there exists an ongoing effort by the education ?reform? movement to debunk the strongly supported hypothesis that affluence, or lack thereof, is the best indicator of academic performance.

I constantly attack the Common Core State Standards Initiative because it is the foundation of the institution responsible for hurting our schools, our teachers, and our kids. ?And it?s not an accident. ?The Common Core Standards were built with one main goal in mind: to standardized learning in preparation for standardized testing so that testing companies could sell billion-dollar contracts with state education departments. ?Why? ?Because under Race to the Top, the states are required to purchase those contracts with Race to the Top funds, which almost never cover the costs. ?It?s a vicious cycle and the states (all but 5) are trapped.

Every strong institution needs a reliable foundation.

The strong institution of corporate education reform has a strong foundation that has tricked state education departments into believing this is best for our kids. ?That foundation is called the Common Core State Standards Initiative. ?Without it, the corporations responsible for rapidly dismantling our democratic system of education would have nothing.

Source: http://mgmfocus.com/2013/01/10/common-core-another-response-to-a-another-false-crisis/

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