Peter Greene reports on a debate where Michelle Rhee and Dennis Van Roekel, among others, team up to defend the Common Core standards. They are, he notes, the sharpest minds of our generation. Oh dear.
The best criticism emanates from some of the CC defenders, as when Charles Barone of “Democrats for Education Reform” (the hedge fund managers’ advocacy group for charters and high stakes testing of Other People’s Children) defended the Common Core and called them the “Vietnam of educational issues.” Apt phrasing for a program that has become so toxic that it’s future is in doubt.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Had they called it the napalm of of educational issues they would have been more accurate. Mike Kaufman
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 18:05:57 +0000 To: mkaufman27@msn.com
I was just going to ask when Duncan, Rhee, etal start advocating that we spray Agent Orange on public schools.
Might be interesting if the anti-common-core crowd adopted a color!
Jb2: given the diversity of CC critics, the colors should be a rainbow, don’t you think?
Hey, it worked after Stonewall! 🙂
The point about the diversity of the critique of deform is well made. The deformers don’t get this. They have their enemies on the left, the right, and the center. And then there are the millions who don’t know, yet, what they have been up to. But those millions are learning.
I have had people attack me on this very blog for being a right winger and for being a left winger. The deformers would love to believe that the opposition comes from fringe elements–that it’s all the Tea Party or some weird combination of folks from the Tea Party and the extreme left. But the fact is that the sole shared characteristic of those opposed to Education Deform is that they are aware of what is happening.
Vietnam! What great parallels! Like…say…WE NEVER SHOULD HAVE GONE IN IN THE FIRST PLACE. Boy did he leave himself open on that one.
What a fine post; Sharp and insightful.
agreed
Thanks Bob and Mercedes– high praise indeed from the two of you.
No doubt they think it takes destroying a village to raze a child …
LOL
Too funny!
Great piece, Peter!
Great to see that folks from CATO and AEI were there to speak against this evil.
That’s because they’re part of Cato’s and AEI’s Speech and Debate Teams and they got assigned the “anti” side of the question.
LOL
Let’s see…Arne Duncan is Robert McNamara. Barak Obama is Lyndon B. Johnson. Help me out with the other characters…Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein. Just barely missing the draft for that waste of human life…55,000 names on the Black Wall in DC…whose names will be inscribed on the monument to the CC$$?
Following the analogy to its logical conclusion, we need many teachers to risk becoming CCSS conscientious objectors.
Michelle Rhee starring as . . .
William Laws Calley, Jr.is a convicted American war criminal and a former U.S. Army officer found guilty of murder for his role in the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.
Rhee, a four letter word, is no friend of publlc education.
Yes! The best and brightest have once again blundered us into a mess. Where are Laurel and Hardy when you need a good critique? Let us withdraw from this mess while we can, surely we have learned something. Are the kids the draftees in this fight? They surely did not ask to participate, maybe they can go to Finland to avoid this draft. Oh, sorry, they are not rich enough to get an exemption. Vietnam indeed.
Ahhh. I remember…Michelle Rhee is Madam Diem, Gates and Klein are George Kennan and McGeorge Bundy. Diane Ravitch is Daniel Ellsberg, author of the Pentagon Papers. New York State will be the My Lie. The CC$$ are the Agent Orange. In the end, the US will be left like a scorched earth. When the helicopters come to the US Office of Education, I want to see who’s first standing in line to be evacuated. Could it be that tall basketball player?
It’s interesting to see how history plays out once again.
Let’s hope New York is the Battle of Hue, rather than My Lai. We’ve had enough innocent victims as it is.
Common Core is the Vietnam of educational issues?
Huh! We lost in Vietnam. Anyone need proof. The government is the same Communist party the US fought in Vietnam for 19 years.
In addition, the justification for starting the war in Vietnam was based on a lie similar to the lie that led to the war in Iraq.
So the comparison is perfect. Common Core is based on lies and its fate will end in defeat.
Vietnam mobilized a generation to take to the streets and protest. If the Common Core is the “Vietnam of educational issues”, the it should be defeated by the mass protests of an alliance of progressives demonstrating against its foundation. The ‘reformers’ have the power of money behind them, but the can’t overcome large scale organized and coordinate protest. Does anyone remember “Mobe”, which coordinated the mass Vietnam protests? What we need is a mobilization coordination for this struggle. There is no strength in fragmented protest. In unity their is power.
The support of Common Core is nothing more than “echo chamber” affect where like minded people talk among themselves in an effort to convince the public of the benefits.
These folks will not sit down with people who see first hand of the flaws nor submit to questions which challenge the praise
of Common Core.
No, they are above all that democratic messiness. Theirs to to command. Ours is to obey.