To the Common Core Curriculum – NUTS! – From the American People

Written on Saturday, March 15, 2014 by Geoffrey G. Fisher

Common Core was doomed from the start for so many reasons, then President Obama handed a presidential anvil to the National Governors’ Association rather than a needed parachute. Now the national educational establishment including Secretary Arne Duncan is heading for the floor of the proverbial canyon just like Wile E. Coyote – meep, meep.

The supporters of the Common Core State Standards Initiative seem truly amazed by the blow-back they are receiving from parents, teachers, free-thinking liberals, conservatives and even libertarians who see their worst fears materializing with the sharing of data bases. It looks like these pseudo-elites have met their match – they have been delivered a message made famous by U.S. Army Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944: To the German Commander, as to our surrender, NUTS!.......

“Do we really want to trust the architect and manager of Obamacare with the education of American’s most precious treasure, her children?” Thomas Jefferson summed up the sheer terror of federal misadventures in 1820 when he was asked to comment on the Missouri Compromise vis-à-vis slavery: “but this momentous question (of slavery), like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the (death) knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence” – that would come 41 years later in the form of the Civil War…..To Read More….

My Take – Four things are clear.

1.        Common Core had nothing to do with education and is clearly an effort to usurp state authority by the nation’s socialist thinking elites in and out of the federal government.

2.       It also appears it’s blatantly illegal! Imagine that!

3.      We don't need a Department of Education.

 

The current department was created as a cabinet position in 1981 and ultimately ended up with these four responsibilities.

 

"1. To establish policies relating to financial aid for education, to administer distribution for these funds, and to monitor their use.

2. To collect data and oversee research on America's schools and disseminate this information to the public.

3. To identify major issues and problems in education and to focus attention to these problems.

4. To enforce federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in programs and activities receiving federal funds and to ensure equal access to education."

You will notice they've pretty much failed at everything except spending a great deal of money and promote a social agenda.  Assuring children are properly taught reading, writing and arithmetic are not listed among their responsibilities.   As for equal access and discrimination, that was done before it was created, and is a legal issue that would fall under the scope of the Attorney General.  

4.       Over the years they have dumped billions into education and yet huge numbers of kids are either dropping out or coming out incapable of reading, writing and working basic math.  Graduation rates in the 50’s before the federal government contaminated education was at around 75% of all students.   Currently the graduation rate is higher at about 78%, but that’s misleading.  How many really deserve to graduate?  The numbers who can’t read, write, do basic math, find a country on a map, know the history of this nation, let alone the rest of the world is abysmally high.  In short. We’re spending billions to make sure a lot of undereducated, unqualified kids get degrees that are worthless as opposed to being educated.  So what exactly was it they were fixing?  And now their solution was to spend even more money and issuing even more directives from on high, and from what I’ve been reading, dummying down the system to a level that’s even worse than it is now. 

So what’s my solution?  Repeal the 16^th and 17^th amendments.