Who Do Your Children Belong To?

The Heritage Foundation posted an article today pointing out that because parents are become more aware of what the program is, many states are renaming the Common Core program in order to sneak it past the parents. The curriculum is unacceptable to parents for a variety of reasons.

The article reports:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, as it is officially known, began in earnest in early 2009. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers drafted the standards, but the effort quickly became a Washington-centric one. To induce states to adopt the standards, the federal government:

  • Offered more than $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants.
  • Directly financed the two national testing consortia developing the assessments to test whether students learn according to the standards.
  • Have offered waivers to states from the onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for common standards adoption.
  • Have created a technical review panel for the tests housed at the U.S. Department of Education.

Parents recognize that Common Core national standards and tests will require them to relinquish one of their most powerful tools to effect school improvement: control of academic content, standards, and testing through their state and local policymakers. Parents recognize that Common Core takes their seats at the table, further removing them from the decision-making process in favor of decisions being centrally made by national organizations and Washington bureaucrats.

The last thing this country needs is Washington bureaucrats messing up children’s education.

The article quotes a very troubling statement:

“The children belong to all of us,” former Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville recently stated. Likewise, according to MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Wrong.

Part of the problem with the education our children are currently receiving is that  the involvement of parents in our schools has decreased greatly because of the need for two wage earners in families. Common Core will totally freeze parents out of all decision processes concerning educational standards for their children–these will now be standards set by the federal government that have no room for individuality.

Common Core needs to be replaced by a plan that allows states and communities to set educational standards that fit their communities. In education, one size does not fit all.

Enhanced by Zemanta