Analyzing the new federal educational curriculum. The ingenuous way proponents describe the curriculum in order to sneak it by is pretty despicable.
Conservatives are in an uproar over Common Core an educational curriculum being forced upon the states by the Obama administration which is scheduled to be mostly implemented this year in the 46 states that have adopted it. Common Core eliminates local control over K-12 curriculum in math and English instead imposing a one-size-fits-all top-down curriculum that will also apply to private schools and homeschoolers.
Superficially it sounds good. It creates universal standards that supposedly educate all children for college. But along with the universal standards come a myriad of problems which the administrators of Common Core are disingenuously denying. The American Principles Project released an analysis last year of Common Core exposing the duplicitous language. Common Core describes itself as internationally benchmarked" robust" aligned with college and work expectations" rigorous" and evidence-based." None of this is true.
Common Core proponents claim that it is not a federal mandate instead using language like state-led" and voluntary." The Common Core website asserts The federal government was NOT involved in the development of the standards." It states that Common Core is not a national curriculum but a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what knowledge and skills will help our students succeed."
Diane Ravitch a former assistant U.S. secretary of education who was appointed to office by both Clinton and George H.W. Bush recently changed her mind about Common Core. Ravitch now refutes claims by Obama and Common Core that the standards were created by the states and voluntarily adopted by them. She writes in The Washington Post They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states." Instead Common Core is being driven by policymakers in D.C.