{"id":24183,"date":"2014-10-29T14:57:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T18:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24183"},"modified":"2014-10-29T14:57:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T18:57:13","slug":"common-sense-from-the-huffington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24183","title":{"rendered":"Common Sense From The Huffington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

I missed this article when it came out, but the Huffington Post<\/a> posted an article in early August that makes an important point.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

The story about Bill Gates’ swift<\/a> and silent takeover of American<\/a> education is startling. His role and the role of the U.S. Department of Education<\/a> in drafting and imposing the Common Core standards<\/a> on almost every state should be investigated by Congress<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea that the richest man in America can purchase and — working closely with the U.S. Department of Education — impose new and untested academic standards on the nation’s public schools is a national scandal. A Congressional investigation is warranted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The close involvement of Arne Duncan<\/a> raises questions about whether the law was broken.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just the idea that the federal government is taking over local education is frightening.<\/p>\n

The writer of the article explains why she opposes Common Core:<\/p>\n

The revelation that education policy was shaped by one unelected man, underwriting dozens of groups. and allied with the Secretary of Education, whose staff was laced with Gates’ allies, is ample reason for Congressional hearings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have written on various occasions (see here<\/a> and here<\/a>) that I could not support the Common Core standards because they were developed and imposed without regard to democratic process. The writers of the standards included no early childhood educators, no educators of children with disabilities, no experienced classroom teachers; indeed, the largest contingent of the drafting committee were representatives of the testing industry. No attempt was made to have pilot testing of the standards in real classrooms with real teachers and students. The standards do not permit any means to challenge, correct, or revise them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a democratic society, process matters. The high-handed manner in which these standards were written and imposed in record time makes them unacceptable. These standards not only undermine state and local control of education, but the manner in which they were written and adopted was authoritarian. No one knows how they will work, yet dozens of groups have been paid millions of dollars by the Gates Foundation<\/a> to claim that they are absolutely vital for our economic future, based on no evidence whatever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article points out that at a time when local districts are struggling to fund education adequately, they are now being asked to spend additional money on Common Core materials, testing, software and hardware. This does not make sense.<\/p>\n

Diane Ravitch<\/a>, who wrote the article at the Huffington Post is a Research Professor of Education, New York University<\/a>; and Author of the book, ‘Reign of Error.’ She is calling for a Congressional investigation into Common Core.
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I missed this article when it came out, but the Huffington Post posted an article in early August that makes an important point. The article reports: The story about Bill Gates’ swift and silent takeover of American education is startling. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5111,4498,735,8308,8309,8307],"class_list":["post-24183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arne-duncan","tag-common-core","tag-congress","tag-diane-ravitch","tag-the-gates-foundation","tag-u-s-department-of-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24184,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24183\/revisions\/24184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}