Beware a Common Core ‘Redo’

Despite public outrage against Common Core in our schools, the powerful backers of this failed educational approach continue to inflict it upon us under other names. The multibillion-dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded private organizations to push Common Core, and federal taxpayer dollars are used to coerce States to perpetuate this travesty.

There is no public accountability for Common Core and never has been. It requires vast new testing that lacks proven benefits, and it imposes new curriculum criticized by parents and teachers alike.

According to reports, none of the writers of these standards for English Language Arts and math have ever even been a teacher of those subjects at elementary or high school levels. No one has fully and officially explained who picked the drafters of Common Core standards.

Support for Common Core by teachers has fallen to only about half of what it was a few years ago. Decline in support by parents and taxpayers has also occurred.

Yet Common Core lingers on in most places, repackaged in ways to disguise its roots. Only three states—Oklahoma, Indiana and South Carolina—have repealed Common Core.

Most recently, the New York state education committee announced that a committee of parents and educators have recommended changing more than 50 percent of the math and English Language Arts standards. But the co-founders of “Stop Common Core in New York State” observe that even these changes are not enough, because they extend the scourge of Common Core. Instead, they urge that Common Core be completely discarded and that schools be allowed to restore their prior standards. As the parent activists Yvonne Gasperino and Glen Dalgleish recently told New York educators about Common Core, “For the love of God, kill the rabid fox and put it out of its misery!”

In most states the time to repeal Common Core is early in the year, when the state legislatures are in session, which requires pre-filing bills in November and December. Now, more than ever, it is time to repeal Common Core rather than allow it to continue under different names. {eoa}

This article was originally published at eagleforum.org. Used with permission.