Investigative Kathleen McGrory reports in the Miami Herald that Common Core has critics on the left.
This is noteworthy, because Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists that the main criticism of Common Core comes from extremists and fringe groups like the Tea Party. He also insists that the federal Department of Education has had nothing whatever to do with the Common Core standards; after all it is illegal for the federal Department of Education to interfere in curriculum or instruction. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Everyone knows that 45 states would not have endorsed the Common Core standards without the lure of $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top dollars, offered as an incentive for those who signed on to standards they may never have seen.
McGrory discovered critics of Common Core on the left, and lo and behold, they are teachers.
To be specific, they are the Badass Teachers Association.
McGrory writes:
The 25,000 BATs, as they call themselves, are pushing back against the national standards with Twitter strikes, town hall meetings and snarky Internet memes. They have no qualms with the theory behind the new benchmarks, but they fear the larger movement places too much emphasis on testing and will stifle creativity in the classroom.
“It’s not just the Tea Party that’s skeptical of the Common Core,” said Bonnie Cunard, a Fort Myers teacher who manages the Facebook page for the 1,200 Florida BATs. “We on the left, like the folks on the right, are saying we want local control.”
The BATs represent a new wave of liberal opposition to the Common Core standards, which includes some union leaders, progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers. They are joining forces with Tea Party groups and libertarians, who want states like Florida to slow down efforts to adopt the new benchmarks and corresponding tests.
They face an uphill battle. The Common Core standards have a strong base of support that includes both Democrats and Republicans. What’s more, the standards are already being taught across all grade levels in Florida.
It’s not only the BATs.
“The sand is shifting for us on Common Core,” said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association.
Ford fears teachers weren’t adequately prepared for the transition to the new standards, even though they will be evaluated — and in some cases, compensated — based on how well their students perform.
For Susan Smith, who heads the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, the greatest concern is the testing that will accompany the new benchmarks.
“We shouldn’t be revamping our education standards without first considering if we are overtesting our kids,” Smith said. “That’s putting the cart before the horse.”
The Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group Democrats for Education Reform loves the Common Core and the disruptive effects of the testing that comes with it.
So does the Obama administration, and so do many teachers and parents who hope it will help their schools.
But so does Florida’s Republican legislature, which leaves no stone unturned when it comes to looking for ways to privatize public schools and demoralize classroom teachers.
But the opposition is strong enough that state Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, is calling for a review before Florida moves further ahead with the standards and accompanying exams.
“I get what the intention was with Common Core,” said Bullard, a Miami Democrat and teacher. “But it got lost in the shuffle with all of the other education reform policies. Now, you might as well scrap the whole idea.”
Hi Diane,
PA Education Committee has a meeting in regards to CC on Thurs. Aug. 29th. Anyway we can the word out to flood them with calls….some law makers are saying it will go through no matter what, but maybe we can stop it or at least put a hold on more. The person in “charge” wants comments/questions sent to him. I did send some. Sen. Mike Folmer is the man to contact.
Thanks for helping get the word out on this piece, Diane. It borders on a media breakthrough: an open acknowledgement that there is left-wing/liberal/progressive opposition and resistance to CCSSI. I’ve been trying for several months (longer in some venues) to get across to extreme right-wing opponents of the Common Core who insist upon dredging up a lot of black helicopter, Obama-the-UN-and-Commies scenarios to rally their base against these federal “standards” and tests that they are doing a lot of harm by not sticking to facts. Further, by making this an “Obama” issue instead of keeping their eye on the real perpetrators – the Billionaires Boys Club, huge foundations, think-tanks, corporations (Pearson, ACT, ETS, McGraw-Hill, etc.), and Wall Street – they run the very high risk of leading people badly astray. That sort of thinking would conclude, illogically, that if the CCSSI is stopped or slowed down, and if its provisions and tests can be kept from completely taking effect until January 2017, all will be well and the fight will be won.
Nothing could be further from the truth, since this is not a partisan political issue. Both Republicans and Democrats with political power are backing this turkey and they won’t quit when Obama leaves office, any more than they did when Reagan, GHWB, Clinton, or GWB left office. These are folks playing the long game (or the “Big Con,” if you will), and the new boss is almost certainly going to be the same as the old boss when it comes to educational policy as long as there’s money to be made from privatizing schools and lots of capital being spent so that the few can once again profit on the backs of the many.
Thanks Michael for this’ right on target’ assessment. We public policy wonks who are educators have been saying for some years that when the Tea Party wakes up to their real self interest and joins with the progressives, we will have a big voice, and real representation in Congress. Perhaps Common Core will be the issue, and this is the moment, for this turnaround.
We, in Joining Forces for Education, are going out of our way to talk with groups who have been hostile to teachers views. It is a slow arduous climb, but I am encouraged by your statement.
As you know from my, and other posts here, the LA Times seems bent on only reporting their perceived success stories of charters and TFA….so we find in LA that there is no print media publishing our message to the public. Even the LA Weekly, generally rather counter culture, did a long article praising Parent Revolution and one of the main intimidators whom they label a “hero” plus an undereducated parent leader of parent trigger in Adelanto, and made them both seem fodder for pulp fiction…totally without balance from our perspective.
Your statement could have easily read the following; If written by a Tea Party member that thinks their belief is the real self interest;
“that when the Progressive Party wakes up to their real self interest and joins with the Tea Party, we will have a big voice, and real representation in Congress.”
There is a big misunderstanding about what the vast majority of ‘Tea Party people stand for. I find it fascinating to try to understand why people believe what they believe and the influences they have been subjected to in order for that belief to be set.
Most Tea Party people are not so much for the Tea Party as they are for the U.S. Constitution.
A more accurate name is probably Constitutionalist, to which I identify.
The word Progressive implies that going forward is making progress toward improvement and such. It also implies that it makes progress toward enlightenment and intelligence.
Those of a Constitutionalist mind-set see value in progress as well but not at the expense of individual liberty.
I am surprised that the two groups are in sync on the defeat of Common Core, and in support of keeping education at the local level.
Constitutionalist value teachers that are honest and teach with integrity. Placing your kids in the care and mentoring of teachers for hours every day of the week takes a lot of faith that someone will not try to sway impressionable young minds to further their own politics. Nor would Progressives desire that if it came from a Tea Party type teacher promoting her point of view.
I don’t know how to bridge the gap between the two belief systems but it appears to be that we at least agree on the Common Core issue and on the surface it seems to be for similar reasons.
Michael from the previous post made mention of ‘black helicopter’ type of mentality as our prejudice against Common Core. As a group we are naturally suspicious of governmental interference in our children’s education. There are some people that do not trust government to be honest about their true intentions and a lot of this has basis in fact. Not every one is a conspiracy theorist but then again some conspiracies are in fact conspiracies in some fashion or another.
Case in point is Common Core.
I know that many people are defensive when President Obama is implicated in being responsible for Common Core in any way. Yet it can be obviously seen that he not only promoted it, he paved the way by sending Congress his wish list of things he wanted in NCLB (No Child Left Behind) ; Things that more than co-incidentally support Common Core.
But I agree he is not the problem here, but merely a major player.
Corporate interest as mentioned by Michael are spot on. The educational system is being overtaken by special interest and big business. Bill Gates in particular is aiming to make enormous sums of money off this scheme.
Although there are Progressive fingerprints all over the Common Core implementation one would be hard pressed to find many if any Constitutionalist.
There is a huge problem to be acknowledged when people of one singular ideology is in charge of the information that is dispersed to children.
I have done some extensive research about Common Core and it is still on-going. What I have come to understand is that it was almost exclusively financed by the Gates Foundation.
Constitutionalist detest any single human interfering with the rule of law or bending it to their advantage or bypassing it to avoid public scrutiny (via going around Congress). Bill Gates is not my elected representative and does not speak for me. I respect that he is successful and has at his disposal seemingly unlimited sums of money to buy what he wants. I do not want him to revered as omnipotent because of his cash and the power it brings.
Corporations and ultra rich people such as Gates, Soros and so forth should be legally prevented from perverting our Constitution. If the people of this country want to change it – there is a process for that. That process must not be changed simply for the reward of funding.
There are many players in the Common Core manipulation, Constitutionalist are not among them. People will have different views on things and these differing views should be engaged and debated. Common Core allowed no real debate to occur. It is promoted as state supported but in the legal sense it was not.
I have some information to share and links for reference to support my writing. I would be glad to share and discuss what I know and hopefully you could find it useful as well. And if you have anything to present I am open-minded to hear and evaluate all sides. I look for fact rather than opinion. When facts point to an underlying agenda then one may feel free to form an opinion about that. Noting that opinions based on fact as more weighted than opinions based on loyalty or cash.
I will follow this blog for a while in the event you respond.
Respectfully
Roger M.
ramassist@msn.com
Roger, my own personal close encounter with the Tea Party happened a few years ago when I was asked by a Democratic Club to be on a panel including two doctors and the California organizer of Healthcare for All. I was speaking around So. Calif. on the issue of single payer universal health care, which I believe in, and when I accepted the invitation, and it was publicized all over this community, I noticed online that the local Tea Party leader had invited their members to come and essentially disrupt the meeting using bull horns to make comments, and to take videos of the panel. Thereafter, she put my name and address online and urged these folk to visit me at my home.
The night of the meeting, which was held at the public library, 4 or 5 buses came filled with over 200 Tea Party members from Lancaster, a two hour trip for them. Since this was a Dem Club meeting, the auditorium was already filled to capacity with Dems, but that did not stop this aggressive group from trying to disrupt the meeting. Police were called by the librarians and arrests were made…all as the panel did our presentation.
I was personally harassed with angry phone calls and letters for some months, before they stopped and went on the do this kind of community activity elsewhere. Left me not feeling friendly to this sort of demonstration which was clearly undemocratic. You can find this all reported online if you go far enough back since it was about 3 – 4 years ago. It even made the national news a few days later when some of these folks got into a physical altercation and a man had his finger bitten off…you may remember that.
As to the Constitution, I find that I am far more of an Absolutist than many members of SCOTUS in the past 15 years…do not believe the President should be appointed by the Supremes, and do not believe that the Voting Rights Act, nor Brown v. the Bd.of Ed, nor Roe v. Wade, should be gutted by this most activist Court in our history. And I definitely do not believe that Creationism is NOT a valid subject to teach to public school students.
And by the way, I have never been to any progressive or Dem meeting where people came with loaded guns attached their persona as they do in other states. I am not a believer that anyone should be allowed to carry guns other than law enforcement. Hope you don’t choose to sic these people on me again for my comments on this site. So I do not think you have a clear focus on what is a Constitutionalist.
We do agree however on Common Core and the corporatists taking over the public education system, clearly for profit. So this proves my point that some Tea Party members, if not FreedomWorks Dick Armey, may be able to work in sync with Progressives on some issues, to the benefit of all.
Ouch…typo…meant to say that I do not believe that Creationism is valid and should be taught anywhere, but particularly in our public schools. I am a firm believer in separation of church and state.
This is very good news–especially the words in the second to last paragraph,”But the opposition is strong enough…”
Keep it coming, people–strength in numbers. Yes WE can and yes we WILL!
Thank you, all of you for your insight and your action. You have educated me on the truth behind this mess and have inspired me to take action. This news about the Florida BATS is lifting my spirits as I face another year fretting about Common Core. I will do my part to make sure that my state, NY follows their lead.
I would like to recommend May 2, 2014 for a nation wide, teacher
sick-out, in order to protest the endless testing and the corporate hi-jacking of public education in America. The preferred date was May 4 because it is Horace Mann’s birthday; unfortunately it falls on a Sunday in 2014. Any one interested? In my perfect dream world, all 3.2 million of us shut down every school in the country to make our voices heard.
As always, Diane Ravitch gives a voice to so many. It is not always easy to stand up and speak up, but we all must do so.
Speak as a parent, speak as a teacher, speak as a student, speak as a citizen. Just speak up.
Thank you to Diane Ravitch for letting us share our voice.
Every little thing that each one of us does, be it opting a child out of a test, supporting an education friendly candidate for office, running for office ourselves, or educating ourselves and sharing our knowledge will help put an end to this nonsense. But it is going to take ALL of us! Go., Florida! Be the first state to drop Common Core and I bet that it won’t be long before other states join you!
Thank You BAT Teachers. I spoke to my school board recently as a liberal, teacher, and local union vice president regarding my concerns about Common Core. I felt well received, but I obviously hit a nerve. In the public record of the meeting it said I talked about “different forms of instruction”. No mention was made about Common Core. I was censored.
Shannon, your situation is a travesty on free speech. It shows how news is managed to keep truth from the general public, and even from our colleagues. So sorry that your brave stance was for naught. Hang in…hope there are no reprecussions…so please keep us informed.