Common Core puts feds in control

Common Core will control the curriculum of public schools, charter school, private schools, religious schools, Catholic schools and home schooling. The control mechanism is the tests. Kids must pass the tests in order to get a high school diploma or be admitted to a college. If they haven’t studied a curriculum based on Common Core standards, they won’t score well on the tests.

Common Core is costly to the states. The Common Core academic level is lower than what many states now use. The math standards are so inferior that the only real mathematician on the validation committee refused to sign off on the math standards.

Common Core’s English standards designate that the assigned readings should be 50 percent informational texts instead of American and English literature and classics.

Common Core will give federal control of the school curriculum. The plan is to have the power to dictate and overrule all decisions by state and local school boards, state legislatures, parents and even Congress. As the price for getting a waiver to exempt a state from other mandates, such as No Child Left Behind. the program authorizes government agencies to gather and store all sorts of private information on every schoolchild, from birth through all levels of schooling.

Common Core is a national project that was created in secret, without any input from teachers or state legislatures. It is not “internationally benchmarked.”

There’s a lot more to this than the Daily Herald’s article of Aug. 18 covers.

Parents should fully research Common Core and what it will actually mean for their student. Educational matters should be left to the parents, local school districts and state legislatures and not the federal government.

Bonnie Quirke

Libertyville