The reason why I suggest that this is all you’d ever really need to know about Common Core has less to do here with what it’s all about, or what it’s really about, or what each side says about the other’s arguments or facts or what have you, than who it is that is speaking out in this particular video. During the entire Common Core creation and implementation, there had only ever been the involvement at any level, two actual experts in education within their respective fields of subject matter. One was Dr. Sandra Stotsky, the other was Dr. James Milgram. Their input was not sought until the validation phase, meaning that not one single expert in the field of Language Arts Education nor Math Education was a participant during the creation phase of this monster.
The involvement of Stotsky and Milgram during the validation phase was little more than a ruse, designed specifically to trick Americans into believing that the goal of Common Core was improved educational standards in our school system. Remember that Stotsky and Milgram were the only two experts ever tapped, and they served on a committee along with 28 others, all of whom were politicos. In the end, both Stotsky and Milgram refused to sign off on the program, and have since been traveling the fruited plains warning American parents about the whole thing. This video is their testimony to the Alaskan Legislature, taken during a hearing on common Core and that state’s adoption of it.
Some of the more striking details you’ll notice will include the fact that the members of the Validation Committee, basically a built in watch dog group, were forced to sign confidentiality agreements promising not to disclose any of the committees workings. The language arts standards deemphasized literature, and substituted informational texts. So, instead of reading Charles Dickens, our kids will be reading Barack Obama’s Executive Orders. Tracts on Global Warming, Sustainability, and Keynesian Economic Theory will replace Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain. Our public, and by the way private schools are being turned into Marxist indoctrination centers, and not one single citizen in our great nation voted on anything that said, “yes we should do this.”
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the whole Common Core infliction, is the small fact that it represents the entire educational system of the United States being federalized, and then offered as a gift to a few large corporations. This is crony capitalism at its worst. People of the left like to bandy about the charge of Fascism to describe any from the political right with whom they disagree, and this literally is the very definition of a Fascistic endeavor.
By the end of the eighth grade, students in common core aligned class rooms will be a full two years behind those who were not subjected to this foolishness. The scary part of that statement is that according to Dr. Milgram, the real damage occurs in high school. According to Dr. Pesta’s conversation from yesterday on Common Core, our high school students will all be graduating with the exact same skills and completed course work in mathematics. According to Dr. Milgram’s testimony, that level will be Algebra II, and no further. Only 33% of students who’s highest level of math achievement is Algebra II will achieve a four year degree in any subject, virtually none of those students will be capable of achieving degrees necessitating higher mathematics study. Now, here’s the real question, how is lowering the bar from successful completion of a primary Calculus course to Algebra II as the high water mark an improvement in math standards? This literally comes straight out of a novel written by George Orwell.
