Free Republic

Common Core is on the chopping block. Oklahoma today became the third state to exit the national education standards and reclaim its decision-making authority in education. The move comes on the heels of South Carolina, which days ago put an end to Common Core—setting precedent for other states to follow. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley quietly signed a bill withdrawing the state from Common Core, but Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, also a Republican, was not shy about stating her reasons for pulling her state from the national standards. “We are capable of developing our own Oklahoma academic standards that will...

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill to repeal Common Core standards in the state on Thursday, saying Oklahomans are “capable of developing our own academic standards that will be better than Common Core.” The state is now clear to formulate new English and math standards specifically tailored for Oklahoma students. “Now is the time for Oklahomans – parents, citizens, educators, employers and elected officials – to unite behind the common goal of improving our schools. That begins with doing the hard work of building new, more rigorous Oklahoma standards,” Fallin said

Does handwriting matter? Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard. But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep. Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate...

The deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education spoke at the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress this past week. After his remarks, several leaders of afterschool nonprofit programs participated in a panel discussion on the expansion and value of afterschool programs. _DSC6104.NEF Jonathan Brice, deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Education, told the audience, “In education, everything matters. Curriculum matters, assessments matter, professional development for teachers, access and opportunity to higher level coursework matters for all children.” He pushed for extending the normal school day in order to increase “the role that community partners play to...

On Capitol Hill, the Heritage Foundation recently sponsored a briefing and screening of a movie on Common Core, entitled “Building the Machine.” The movie was funded by the Home School Legal Defense Association and was directed by Ian Reid. Arriving fresh from a vote on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa addressed the audience before the movie screening. senator chuck grassley Senator Grassley pointed out the inconsistencies about Common Core, or by its official name, the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI), in his remarks. Referring to the federal government system, Grassley said, “The government makes decisions...

“The reason why I helped write the [Common Core] standards and the reason why I am here today is that, as a white male in society, I am given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn,” said Dr. David Pook at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. The irony here is that this self-professed “privileged white male” teaches at an expensive school for the white privileged and that the Common Core standards he helped design are not good enough for his students. …

What would you think if your 8-year-old came home and told you that “white privilege is something that white people have, meaning they have an advantage in a lot of things and they can get a job more easily”? You would have heard that at the recent 15th annual White Privilege Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, attended by 2,500 public-school teachers, administrators and students from across the nation (http://tinyurl.com/lkoqj9b).The average parent has no idea of the devious indoctrination going on in classrooms in many public schools. What follows are some of the lessons of the conference.In one of the workshops, “Examining...

A teacher told attendees at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics Monday night that he helped write the controversial Common Core education standards to end white privilege. Dr. David Pook, a professor at Granite State College and chair of the History department at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, argued in favor of Common Core. “The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society I am given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn.” Ironically, the $28,535 per year Derryfield School that Dr....

A teacher told attendees at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics Monday night that he helped write the controversial Common Core education standards to end white privilege. Dr. David Pook, a professor at Granite State College and chair of the History department at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, argued in favor of Common Core. “The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society I am given a lot of privilege that I didn't earn.” Ironically, the $28,535 per year Derryfield School that Dr....

Attempts by the Republican establishment to address educational and cultural issues are never pretty. They either try a ham-handed, top-down approach to “make things right” or invest prevailing, and often dubious, approaches with a Republican imprimatur. Somewhere between the two is the emotional investment former Republican governors have made in the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms. A quintet of one-time GOP governors was on display on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce to “confront the myths about Common Core.” Leading the five was former Michigan governor John Engler. Engler noted that on a recent...

Stepping up his criticism, Gov. Bobby Jindal on Wednesday compared Common Core to centralized planning in Russia and predicted the national drive to overhaul academic standards will fail. “The feds are taking over and rushing this,” Jindal said in a prepared statement released late Wednesday. “Let’s face it: centralized planning didn’t work in Russia, it’s not working with our health care system and it won’t work in education,” the governor said. “Education is best left to local control.” The statement represents the latest, and perhaps most pointed, comments that Jindal has made about Common Core, which represents new standards in...

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Michael Petrilli. Ever since election results from May 5th were finalized, a number of voices have loudly touted cherry-picked upsets—namely, the primary defeats of two incumbent Republicans in the Indiana legislature—to build what they want to present as a larger narrative of rising opposition to Common Core. This narrative is misleading. In fact, the GOP primary results from throughout this month showed, if anything, that opposing Common Core is not a ticket to office for a right-flank challenge to an incumbent, and the efficacy of attempts to take out Republicans from the right...

A new study released by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute finds that new technology development that has been encouraged through the use of federal grants has served to threaten children’s privacy by allowing the collection of data on every child. Authors of the study Emmett McGroarty, Joy Pullmann, and Jane Robbins make the case that by means of the nationalized Common Core standards, which states were lured into adopting through competitive grants in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top (RttT) stimulus program in 2009, the federal government has used grant funds to induce states to build identical, increasingly sophisticated student...

As Common Core opponents increasingly gain ground, the initiative’s supporters are articulating more of the social engineering ideology that is at the heart of the nationalized standards. Kimberly Morin of Manchester Political Buzz Examiner reports that teacher David Pook, who claims to have “helped write the standards,” said during a recent Common Core debate at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire, that Common Core was necessary because of “white privilege.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Pook said: "The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society, I’ve been given...

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsA teacher who helped write the controversial Common Core State Standards informed a shocked audience that he was motivated to do so because he is a “white male” who has been “given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn.”Dr. David Pook, a professor at Granite State College and chair of the history department at the Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, had just been introduced at the event at New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Monday night when he delved into his ties to Common Core. “The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason...

Over the past few months, the new U.S. education standard known as the “Common Core” has attracted its fair share of negative attention by opponents.But Florida Republican State Rep. Charles Van Zant took the Common Core critique to a new level by claiming that the educational initiative promoted by the Obama administration will turn your children “homosexual.”Van Zant made the comments at an Orlando education conference back in March, but the video of his remarks went viral on Tuesday. Van Zant told his audience that the American Institutes for Research (AIR), that implements the Common Core in Florida, “will promote...

A new Gallup poll released on Monday shows that Americans consider unemployment/jobs, government corruption, and the economy as the three "most important" problems facing the country. Just 3% of those surveyed listed the environment/pollution as America's most important problem.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Sitting in the headquarters of the Wyoming Liberty Group, Susan Gore, founder of the conservative think tank, said new national science standards for schools were a form of “coercion,” adding, “I don’t think government should have anything to do with education.” Ms. Gore, a daughter of the founder of the company that makes Gore-Tex waterproof fabric, was speaking here weeks after the Republican-controlled Legislature made Wyoming, where coal and oil are king, the first state to reject the standards, which include lessons on human impact on global warming. The pushback came despite a unanimous vote by a...

By this week, the Rialto Unified School District school board outside of Los Angeles was in full damage control, fending off universal opprobrium over a third-quarter English Language Arts argumentative writing/research project given to 2,000 eighth-graders. The breathtakingly ill-conceived assignment asked students to “read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based on cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe [the Holocaust] was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”Most critics denounced the assignment as absurd on its...