Education
Common Core: The Rise of Fed Ed

Common Core: The Rise of Fed Ed

Common Core represents a substantial reduction in school rigor, and it takes curriculum decisions from schools and parents, yet it may soon become almost impossible to avoid. ...
Dr. Duke Pesta

In late 2014, ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber offered up his refreshingly honest and shockingly venal explanation about how the ill-conceived healthcare program became law. The MIT economist, who previously made news by admitting that there are no subsidies in ObamaCare for federal insurance exchanges, went on to suggest that “the stupidity of the American voter” necessitated concealing from the public the true costs of the program. He praised governmental “lack of transparency” as “key” to passing the legislation. And yet for all its inherent obfuscation and deception — who can forget Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that the bill had to be passed before we could find out what was in it — ObamaCare was a model of transparency compared to the creation of Common Core.

Unlike the Affordable Care Act, Common Core was never featured on C-SPAN or in national media prior to its adoption. There were no hearings before Congress, no Supreme Court decisions or town hall meetings, and definitely no consultations with parents and local school boards, the primary stakeholders in our increasingly ineffective public schools.

The fact that something as transformative as Common Core could be conceived, funded, and implemented long before the overwhelming majority of politicians, educators, academics, and families had any idea about its origins, its creators, its financing, or even its ambitions (educational and otherwise), is sobering indeed. And it defies credulity to suggest — as the supporters of Common Core do at every turn — that the initiative was some multifaceted, organic movement driven by teachers and constructed by the states. No, the federal government is the only entity in American life capable of driving educational reform at this level, of bringing together the necessary financial resources, regulatory pressures, coercive policies, no-bid contracts, and crony-capitalist coordination required to wrench control of education from the states and centralize it in Washington, D.C.

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