Flier: Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core

With gratitude to Joy Pullman, whose long version of “Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core” article, with photos and videos, is posted at The Federalist, I’m sharing this extremely condensed two-pager, which can be printed out as a one-pager, front to back, on neon colored paper.

Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core

 

By Joy Pullman – Condensed from:  http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/24/top-ten-things-parents-hate-about-common-core/

 

This is the year national Common Core tests kick in.  It’s also the first year most people  heard of Common Core, four years after bureaucrats signed our kids onto this complete overhaul of U.S. education. Why do 62 percent of parents think it’s a bad idea?

 

1. The Senseless, Infuriating Math

Common Core deforms elementary math. Even simple addition takes inordinate amounts of time.

 

2. The Lies

Common Core’s lies and half-truths  include talking points essential to selling state leaders on the project, such as that Common Core is: “internationally benchmarked,” (“well, we sorta looked at what other nations do but that didn’t change anything we did”); “evidence based” (“we know there isn’t research to undergird any standards, so we just polled some people and that’s our evidence“); “college- and career-ready” (“we meant community-college ready“); “rigorous” (as long as rigorous indicates “rigid”); and “high-performing nations nationalize education” (so do low-performing nations).

 

3. Obliterating Parent Rights

Parents are frustrated. When they go to their school boards  they get disgusted looks or thumb-twiddling or worse. A New Hampshire dad was actually arrested for going over his two-minute comment limit in a local school board meeting that was packed with parents complaining about graphic-sex-filled literature assignments.

 

4. Dirty Reading Assignments

Objectionable books on the Common Core-recommended (not mandated) reading list include called “The Bluest Eyes,” by Toni Morrison. “Make Lemonade” by Virginia Euwer Wolff, “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell, and “Dreaming in Cuban” by Cristina Garcia.  There are so many excellent works of literature available that schools can’t possibly fit all the good ones in.  Why does Common Core recommend trash?

 

5. Turning Kids Into Corporate Cogs

The workforce-prep mentality of Common Core focuses on the materialistic benefits of education, and is not concerned with passing down knowledge, heritage, and morals. The workforce talk certainly tickles the ears of Common Core’s corporate supporters, but why do corporations get to dictate what kids learn?

 

6. Data Collection and Populace Management

Common Core enables the theft of kids’ and teachers’ data, furthering businesses’ bottom lines and governments’ populace-control fantasies, at the expense of private property and self-determination.

1. Common Core tests are the key instrument of data collection.
2. Common Core architect David Coleman admitted special interests packaged data mining into Common Core.
3. Common Core classifies enormous amounts of data, like as an enormous filing system.
4. States that use federally funded Common tests have given control of collected data to private organizations which have promised the government access to kids’ data.
5. Common Core and data vacuuming are philosophically aligned—they both justify themselves as solutions to problems. The goal is to use data to “seamlessly integrate” education and economy. In other words, we learned nothing from the USSR.

 

7. Distancing Parents and Children

A recent study found that the Common Core model of education results in parents being less engaged in their kids’ education and expressing more negative attitudes about schools and government.

 

8. Making Little Kids Cry

It’s one thing to teach a child to endure life’s suffering for a higher purpose. It’s another thing to inflict suffering on children because you’ve got a society to remake. Psychologists and teachers say Common Core inflicts poorly designed, experimental instruction and testing on children.

 

9. The Arrogance

Imagine you’re a mom or dad whose child is sobbing at the table trying to add two-digit numbers. Then you hear your elected representatives talking about Common Core. And it’s not to offer relief. It’s to ridicule opposition to Common Core. Florida Senate President Don Gaetz said of Common Core: “They’re not some federal conspiracy.” Wisconsin state Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) told an audience state hearings on the topic were “crazy”. Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) called opponents a “distract[ing]” “fringe movement.” Well-paid “experts” say parents don’t get what’s going on because this is above parents’ ability to understand.

 

10. The Collectivism

Common Core supporters admit that several states had better curriculum requirements than Common Core. Then they say it’s still better for those states to have lowered their expectations to Common Core’s level, because that way the US has more curricular unity.

 

Tech companies are uber-excited about Common Core because it facilitates a nationwide, uniform market for products. But the diversity of the unregulated private market far, far outstrips the diversity of the Common Core market. That variety is one of substance, not just branding. In other words, it’s true diversity, not fake diversity. Which would you rather have:  fake freedom in education, where others choose your end goal, but “let” you decide some things; or real freedom, where you pick goals and how to achieve them, and you’re the one responsible for the results? Whoops, that’s a trick question.  The overlords have already picked fake freedom for us.  It’s Common Core or the door, baby. 

 Joy Pullmann is managing editor of The Federalist and an education research fellow at The Heartland Institute.