Common Core and Control

How CCSS Came About

Perhaps to start with, I will point out that I have a major concern with the way Common Core was passed into the states. Most states agreed to Common Core in order to increase their chances of winning 2009 stimulus money in the “Race to the Top” competition. At this time, Common Core Standards didn’t exist yet. States were agreeing to something that had not even been written, let alone debated. Yet, they agreed to adopt these standards, implement them by 2014-2015, and change their own state laws if needed to adhere to all Common Core requirements. This “Response to the National review Online Article” goes into detail about this process (starting on page 8). If Common Core really is that great, shouldn’t it at least have been debated and passed with widespread consent among the general population instead of the government bribing states to accept them in exchange for the possibility of stimulus money?

Where did these CCSS originate from anyway? Who developed them? Who paid for their development? As explained by education historian Diane Ravitch, the CCSS “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.” The “Response to the National Review Online Article” offers a more detailed breakdown of how Common Core was developed (starting on page 5).

Why do Bill and Melinda Gates care so much about funding the development and implementation of CCSS through their Gates Foundation? I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me that there are some plausible theories out there, and I believe looking at this question may lead to some more answers as to who is controlling CCSS and for what purposes. The Gates seem to care a great deal about issues such as carbon emissions and population control. It would seem that Gates’ family has a history of such concerns given that Bill Gates’ father was the head of Planned Parenthood according to Bill Gates himself. In an article “The Ambitions of Bill and Melinda Gates: Controlling Population and Public Education,” Anne Hendershott makes a rather compelling case that, “The Core Curriculum is really just another component of population control—it is used to help teach children the ‘facts’ about climate change and problems of over-population.” 

This theory seems all the more plausible when considering the focus on climate change of the new Common Core science standards, called the Next Generation Science Standards. The April 9, 2013 Los Angeles Times article “New Teaching Standards Delve More Deeply into Climate Change” explains, “For the first time, the proposed education standards identify climate change as a core concept for science classes with a focus on the relationship between that change and human activity.”  In addition to furthering the Gates’ own world views, it seems that CCSS is a huge potential money maker for Bill Gates’ company Microsoft and a number of other companies. As I will explain some more briefly in my section on privacy and data mining, CCSS will be costly for schools. In Geek Palaver’s article “Alabama Leads by Repealing Common Core,” it explains, “This is why Gates has pushed for Common Core; this is why Pearson, Broad, Microsoft, HP, and just about every other contractor the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education has hired over the past two years pushes for Common Core: there’s money to be made. According to Dr. Wardynski’s own statement in Huntsville alone, this has amounted to a $40 million dollar investment in two years time. Now multiply that figure by every district in all 46 of the states across the nation and what do you find? That “investment in our curriculum” grows to the billions quite fast.” This video between the authors of the blog “Common Core Education Without Representation” and Chicago History teacher Paul Horton who is part of Citizens Against Corporate Collusion further explains how some businesses are reaping great profits from CCSS and the testing for Common Core (starting roughly around minute 36).

Local vs. National Control

In general, I have a problem with programs and such that try to control many aspects of our lives from a national level. Common Core takes away a lot of state and local education control and makes it very difficult for the state to make its own adjustments or to change the overall standards. I believe that education is better taken care of on local and state level rather than on national one. I would agree with Ezra Taft Benson, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, when he said, “The best way to prevent a political faction or any small group of people from capturing control of the nation's educational system is to keep it decentralized into small local units, each with its own board of education and superintendent. This may not be as efficient as one giant super educational system (although bigness is not necessarily efficient, either) but it is far more safe. There are other factors, too, in favor of local and independent school systems. First, they are more responsive to the needs and wishes of the parents and the community. The door to the school superintendent's office is usually open to any parent who wishes to make his views known. But the average citizen would be hard pressed to obtain more than a form letter reply from the national Commissioner of Education in Washington, D.C.”

To me, the issue of who is controlling education and on what level it is being controlled is probably the most concerning part of the CCSS. There may be many out there who like the Standards and the curriculum associated with them. There may be others who don’t care about the privacy and data mining issues, who love measuring things by standardized tests, or who don’t see the large expenses as being problematic. Yet there is no guarantee that you will continue to agree with these things as they may stand in the future. As long as there are plenty of alternative options to the Standards, then those who oppose them can at very least go elsewhere to educate their children. However, when the CCSS are being taught almost everywhere and are continuing to spread, then the freedom of individuals to choose what they want for their children’s education is severely limited.

Importance of Competition

In asking people’s opinions on Common Core on our facebook page, I received one response from a sixth grade teacher who loved that the standards are the same for the whole country because she believes that this will “level the playing field for kids in college competing with people from other states.” I am not sold on this argument though. While leveling generally involves bringing something up, it also generally involves lowering something else. For example, the state standards of Massachusetts were more rigorous than those of CCSS, but Massachusetts has still adopted CCSS.

If a college accepts different students from different states, it is already assumed that those students have had to go through an acceptance process to get into that college. That process generally weeds students out who do not meet the academic rigors of that given college. For students who don’t pass that acceptance process, there are community colleges and other such places they can go to bring themselves up to the required level if they so desire. Even students who are accepted to that college usually have a number of options of different classes to help them reach the academic level they need to be at for more advanced classes, while more advanced students can often test out of these most basic courses.

Not everyone performs academically on the same level, and not everyone is ever going to be on the same level in every subject. Additionally, not everyone wants their kids to be taught in the same way, nor is it effective to teach all people in the same manner. It seems to me that CCSS limits all students across the states to the same few options rather than allowing for more diversified choices to fit the needs and desires of different schools, students, and parents. As Oak Norton from Utahans Against Common Core has explained, “There’s still some choice in what happens in each school. They can choose CC aligned curriculum from one of a few companies instead of dozens.” He continues on to explain that: 

“For assessments, our ‘choice’ gifted to us by the federal government under our RTTT application was SBAC or PARCC. Utah signed on with SBAC and we fought to get that dropped last year, so they wrote an RFP to choose a new assessment partner and chose AIR which is using SBAC assessment questions. The rest of the country is using SBAC or PARCC. SBAC and PARCC are funded by the federal government. Teachers teach to the test so the feds will drive what happens in the classroom in terms of content. Each state can choose to add 15% to what is taught in classrooms, but that 15% won’t be on any of the national tests, so what teacher is going to teach it when their job is on the line to crank out top test scores for merit pay? None of them. Utah will only teach what’s in the standards.”

The more places that keep Common Core, the more limited people’s overall options will be. Common Core does not just affect public schools; the curriculum of home schooling courses, charter schools, and private schools is also widely being changed to fit CCSS. Catholic schools are adopting Common Core through the Common Core Catholic Identity Initiative and a number of other private Christian schools are also moving into Common Core. Because of their widespread adaptation, there is a great deal of concern that textbooks and tests will all change to reflect CCSS and leave those who wish for different options with few if any alternatives. This includes college entrance exams such as the SAT, which has already said it will align itself with the CCSS.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) Director of Federal Relations William A. Estrada has explained, “HSLDA believes that a one-size-fits-all approach to education crowds out other educational options, including the freedom of parents to choose homeschools and private schools. A common curriculum and tests based off common standards could be very harmful to homeschoolers if their college of choice refuses to accept a student’s high school transcript if it is not based on the CCSS. Homeschoolers could also have trouble on the SAT if the test is fundamentally altered to reflect only one specific curriculum. And our greatest worry is that if the CCSS is fully adopted by all states, policy makers down the road will attempt to change state legislation to require all students—including homeschool and private school students—to be taught and tested according to the CCSS.”

I actually believe personally that having states and even individual schools compete against each other in education can be a good thing. Colleges can and should compete as well. Those who do better academically can then be looked to as an example by those who are not performing as well. Just as in capitalism various companies compete to bring consumers the best products that fit those consumers' needs, I believe states and local areas can and should do the same with education. The most academically successful states, schools, and colleges then act as examples for others to strive to emulate. The competition should drive standards to continually be raised overall, while simultaneously leaving a wide variety of educational options open for people to choose from.