Kathleen Porter-Magee & Sol Stern ask in the subheading of their National Review article defending the Common Core State Standards ask “why are prominent conservatives criticizing a set of rigorous educational standards?”
There are others who have provided direct rebuttals. I want to answer their primary question. While I’m not a “prominent conservative,” I am a conservative who has written extensively about the Common Core.
There are six primary reasons really…
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There is nothing conservative about centralizing education around a set of common standards.
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Conservatives object to the process in which they were adopted which allowed for little to no public debate, cut out the legislative process, and was introduced via the backdoor which cut out “We the People.”
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While perhaps the intent was not to have hyper-federal involvement, but the fact remains it does which violates the constitution and Federal law.
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Conservatives typically don’t approve of student privacy being violated by data mining which will be fostered through the assessment consortiums.
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They simply are not rigorous, they are mediocre and the embrace of the Common Core represents a collective race to the middle.
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They are costly and states adopted the Common Core and entered into assessment consortium without having a handle on the costs. Is this good fiscal discipline?
Read the rest at Caffeinated Thoughts.