Common Core untried, dangerous

What President Obama has called “college and career-ready standards” is actually a federally mandated education curriculum known as Common Core, a set of requirements setting out what every child should learn in grades K-12 in math, English and other subjects.

The lead architect of Common Core standards, David Coleman, an extreme liberal and a product of too much academia, is in the clouds (i.e., unrealistic) in his views of what children need to learn.

Forty-six states, including Illinois, quickly signed on to Common Core in 2010, as introduced in 2009 by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in what amounts to an experimental learning program that has never been tried or tested as to academic achievement results. States were lured to sign on to CC by the promise of federal subsidies from the $4.5 billion “Race to the Top” stimulus spending as a quid pro quo requirement for receiving the money.

There is every reason to believe that Common Core standards will lead to a further radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum that will do nothing to raise achievement standards, empowered as it was by Washington education bureaucrats with backing from liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates.

A leftist progressive government educational agenda is not what many parents wish for their children. Very worrisome is that CCS fails to instill an appreciation of what it means to have liberty under the constitutional form of government.

Buyer regrets have already surfaced in Indiana and Michigan, just two of approximately 10 states who are considering legislation to withdraw from Common Core.

Nancy J. Thorner

Lake Bluff