What is Common Core?

Why does the U.S. Constitution make no mention of education? Because the Founding Fathers understood that the education of children must be at the local level. We now stand at the edge of a cliff as the federal Common Core State Standards continues its march across the country.

How did we get here? In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education blackmailed the states with stimulus money in the form of Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. If states wanted to get out from under No Child Left Behind, and wanted more funding they had to agree to adopt the Common Core. Most states (already underfunded by the federal government) jumped on the bandwagon.

Actually, they probably assumed the parents would take care of it.

No, the founders FEARED public education.

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

-- James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792

Common Core, or, more properly, Communist Core, is the best reason yet to make the necessary sacrifices for the kids and either home school them or enroll them in a quality, religious private school.

It's a microcosm of the same principle behind the "Graduate's Catch-22", where in order to get entry into a job you need X-years of experience in the field, and in order to get experience in the field you need a job.

Story of my life.

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