Sean Fitzpatrick had an excellent article at Crisis Magazine entitled “Common Core’s Rotten Core.” Here’s the opening paragraph:
Despite recent defense rallies by Bill Gates, wars are raging against the embattled Common Core State Standard Initiative, now implemented in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Though criticisms can be leveled at the lack of evidence that the Common Core will lead onward into a brave new world of education, the overarching problem of the initiative is that its strategy is not educational. Standardized, field-leveling information designed for mass consumption with a strict utilitarian agenda is nothing more than a training event, a programming session. Schools are not factories. Education is not indoctrination; it is formation. True education considers and incorporates the role of love in learning and the art of teaching by desire. Extrapolation and examination of real-world facts do not describe a lover’s quest for beauty—and education that fails to capture the heart, fails to educate.