Stephanie Simon reports at politico.com that big business is launching a major campaign to counter Tea Party opposition to the Common Core standards.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have endorsed a major advertising and public relations campaign on behalf of the Common Core.
Within days, Indiana will very likely become the first state to officially scrap the standards, though it is far from clear that they will be replaced with anything too radically different. Bills to undermine the Common Core are pending in at least a half-dozen other states as well. Major conservative organizations such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have jumped in to help guide and grow the grass-roots opposition. And teacher unions, though they still back the standards in concept, are warning that their implementation has been badly botched.
“It’s a critical time,” said Dane Linn, vice president of the Business Roundtable and one of the architects of the Common Core. “State leaders, and the general public, need to understand why employers care about the Common Core.”
The Business Roundtable, he said, is urging members to work their connections with “governors, committee chairs, House speakers, presidents of Senates” to stop any bills that could undercut the standards.
This narrative may actually be part of the marketing plan for the Common Core standards.
By pitting business against the Tea Party, the voices of teachers, researchers, liberals, moderates, and non-ideological parents are silenced.
This is the same narrative that Arne Duncan presented when he spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
But this narrative doesn’t explain widespread opposition to the Common Core among people who have nothing to do with the Tea Party.
When I think of Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian, I don’t think Tea Party.
When I think of Carol Burris, the principal of the year in New York state, I don’t think Tea Party. She has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Common Core, but this new game plan ignores her.
When I think of expert teacher Anthony Cody, who taught in the impoverished schools of Oakland for more than two decades, I don’t think Tea Party.
When I think of Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters in New York City, I don’t think Tea Party.
When I think of the 500 early childhood experts who criticized the Common Core standards, I don’t think Tea Party.
When I think of the thousands of parents in New York who turned out for public meetings with State Commissioner John King to complain about the Common Core and the testing, I don’t think Tea Party.
And for the record, I do not belong to the Tea Party, nor do I have any sympathy whatever with its goals.
Nor does the narrative acknowledge that Common Core’s biggest supporters, aside from Duncan, are rightwingers like Jeb Bush, Bill Haslam, and Bobby Jindal.
This new narrative–big business vs. the Tea Party–is more smoke in our eyes to put across standards that need to be reviewed and revised in every state by expert teachers and decoupled from high-stakes testing.
Full-scale adoption without these changes will harm children and widen achievement gaps among racial groups.
I have a suggestion: How about if the leaders of our major corporations agree to take the PARCC tests and publish their scores?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From where I stand, not all opposition to the Common Core comes from Teabillies, but nearly all Teabilly opposition I’ve read is, to be polite, nuts. It hinges on birtherism-style thinking, and throws every conceivable conspiracy theory into the mix, but rarely seems to point a finger towards some of the obvious players. So Bill Gates is THE villain, because in Billyville, he’s a SOCIALIST (right: so many billionaires are, don’t you know?), but Broad, the Kochs, Bloomberg, the Waltons, the deVoss’s, et al are NEVER mentioned. See, what is rather obviously a financially-motivated (for the most part) movement to destroy democratic, public schools is IN FACT a shadowy conspiracy with roots in the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefellers, FDR, and a host of other long-dead players, to sell the US out to Soviet Communism. I guess the current situation in the Ukraine must have such people in a tizzy, proof that our arch-enemies in Moscow Centre are still trying to take over the world from its RIGHTFUL owners (the US of A).
LikeLike
The Tea Party/ Republican/ corporate ed reform split on the Common Core is amusing to me.
Ed reformers have been screaming “choice!” and “parents know what’s best for their children!” for 30 years, and now they’re trying to convince this same group of people to accept state curriculums pegged to national standards, where the parents had absolutely no input.
A “choice!” ethos doesn’t really lend itself to a national, cooperative effort of any kind, whether they’re selling it as “national competitiveness” or (ridiculously and embarrassingly, for them) “national security”.
If they wanted to do the Common Core correctly, why didn’t they drop the 5000 other ed reform initiatives and just concentrate on doing that one thing really well? It’s a huge undertaking. They would have had to prioritize, they couldn’t have granted every ed reform lobbyist his or her wish list, but with discipline and common sense it could have been done really well.
I think it’s too much for my local rural school. We’ve lost funding under ed reform leadership and we are being ordered to put in the Common Core, “blended learning”, teacher evals, school evals, the gimmicky and dumb Third Grade Reading Guarantee AND we’re dealing with the negative effects of Ohio’s unregulated charter/voucher system. It’s reckless, it wasn’t thought through, and there was no concern for how existing public schools are going to handle this unrelenting barrage of “reforms”.
Enough. Be adults. Make some trade-offs. Prioritize. Do one difficult thing WELL instead of 500 things poorly. Tell someone “no” every once in a while, no matter how powerful or wealthy or well connected within “the movement” they are.
LikeLike
Look at the polls to see what most Americans thinks of the Tea Party which represents about 5% of voting adults:
In October 2013, Rasmussen polls found as many (42%) identify with the Tea Party as with Obama, however, while 30% of those polled viewed them favourably, 50% were unfavorable and while 34% considered them good, 43% considered them bad for America. On major national issues, 77% of Democrats said their views were closest to Obama’s, while 76% of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliated voters identified closely with the Tea Party. A CNN/ORC poll showed 28% were favorable to the party, while 56% were unfavorable.
As you might see, by framing the Common Core debate so it sounds like the Tea Party people are against it, you suddenly shift the majority of Americans in favor of the Common Core becasue they don’t agree with or trust the Tea Party’s agenda.
Clever diversion from the Robber Barons and Wolves of Wall Street to drive support of public education into a sand trap.
LikeLike
Obviously they’re extremely powerful because this whole Common Core sales effort is geared to them. It’s hysterical to me, and typical of ed reformers. “Ignore the masses! Let’s focus obsessively on 5% of parents like we focus obsessively on the 5% of ‘choice’ schools!”
Apparently parents who are not registered Republicans are not a big concern among the Common Core salespeople.
I guess the assumption is we’re all slacker, unengaged parents outside the GOP faithful 🙂
I’m just hoping my local public school somehow gets through this latest half-assed, sloppy effort. Right now I think they’re focusing on putting in the Third Grade Reading Guarantee without too many collateral casualties among the local third graders.
They should spend less time marketing and more time making something worthwhile that lasts longer than 1 financial reporting quarter, ed reformers. When they started calling themselves “CEO’s” of school systems, they weren’t supposed to start buying their own bullshit. They’re not, actually, CEO’s of private companies 🙂
LikeLike
Yes, that’s what the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street should do, but they don’t think like working class teachers and/or parents because they grew up in a world of privilege, power and wealth and this gives them a different mindset and different agendas where they think they know best.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The robber barons of the Industrial age in the late 19th and early 20th century thought the same way today’s robber barons and wolves think. For instance, I’m still reading “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin and am amazed at how nothing has changed when it comes to the thinking and agendas of the top 0.01% who hold most of the wealth. The Bill Gates and Koch brothers of the world aren’t much different than their contemporaries of the same status a century ago.
Most of these billionaire oligarchs—who are mostly sociopaths, narcissists and psychopaths—care nothing for hard working Americans in the middle class or Americans who live in poverty. The see us through blurred filters.
LikeLike
Good analysis Lloyd, I concur. There is the additional possibility that this is meant to prepare the Teafarty to accept a rebranded CC$$ put forth at the states level. The funding, legislative and messaging machines for that are already in place, ALEC, DFER, StudentsLast, Stand on Children, Gates et al etc. If the rebranding succeeds, the momentary bipartisanship lets everybody pat themselves on the back before the divided America meme is restarted. I think that this was always a plan B that was on the shelf waiting to be dusted off if needed. The steady push back across the country is that need. Big gummint defeated! “Local” control is protected. It may also be a way to rehabilitate the Teafarty by giving them a victory that actually does align with mainstream opinion even if the reasons are bat poo crazy.
LikeLike
The fight over The Common Core between business and Tea Party interests puts two regressive pedagogic/ political groups against each other. This is a case that gives the lie to the old adage that “our enemy’s enemy is our friend”. Progressive’s have a stake in this conflict, but must continue their own, independent opposition to both groups.
Our sole allies in this fight are progressive unions. It is now, more than ever, that progressive rank and file educators must wrest control of their unions and ally with their communities to continue to struggle against two enemies, each pernicious, toxic and destructive.
LikeLike
It’s funny, because the ed reform “movement” is so anti-labor, and they have (ironically!) made me much more pro-labor.
It seems to me, watching this privatization fight, where politicians join with business to privatize everything that isn’t nailed down, it is VITALLY important to have a non-governmental entity that advocates for public systems remaining public. Something OUTSIDE government.
Without labor unions there would be nothing that is organized, it would just be politicians + business interests and then a fragmented group of individuals saying “Wait a minute! I think I want to KEEP public schools!”
It’s made me value public sector unions. There needs to be something OUTSIDE government to protect what is a publicly-owned asset. Even if unions serve that role inadvertently and they’re serving their members, I don’t care. They’re ALSO serving me. I don’t have an advocate at the statehouse without them.
LikeLike
I also think the political alliances and machinations of ed reformers are fascinating. Almost completely irrelevant to public school parents, because public schools get only the “stick” end of ed reform, there’s never any benefit to our schools, but still fascinating.
Watching the charter/voucher alliance in Ohio, it’s obvious that they pushed vouchers expansion after they promoted charters because charters were pulling from religious schools. They would have lost their religious school allies, hell, they would have lost some Catholic schools completely. Ed reformers to the rescue! Can’t have Catholics jumping ship!
Rahm Emanuel and other privatization advocates won’t have any choice but to start pushing vouchers. He’ll have to subsidize religious schools to “compete” with charter schools, or they’ll be OFF the ed reform train. Of course, there won’t be any consideration what any of this does to public schools, but it’s still worth watching even if we’re left out of these elaborate political campaigns and shifting alliances.
LikeLike
“State leaders, and the general public, need to understand why employers care about the Common Core.” – Dane Linn
Why should employers call the shots with how human beings are educated and socialized in this country? And for the lowest possible cost, too? I am sick of being talked down to by these yahoos while they do everything in their power to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to help raise the next generation of Americans. As a member of the mass affluent, I pay a lot in taxes and the percentage is way higher than the percentage paid by people who can claim their income as investment income. (As explained by Warren Buffet.)
The bitter irony here is that there is no doubt my children will be “career ready” but this is only a side benefit of them being properly educated and socialized all along on my dime. Dane Linn doesn’t want robust citizens, just pliable and interchangeable cogs for the system. When did it become fashionable to be so blatant in one’s hatred for the up-and-coming generation? To deny them the right of developing at their own pace, with the support of trained and valued teacher/mentors? The rhetoric of “choice” is a bunch of transparent hooey when parents are never being listened to when they speak up for the rights of their children as children.
LikeLike
The corporate sponsors have also set their sights on moms, which may turn out to be a very serious miscalculation on their part. Apparently, they aren’t familiar with the adage about never getting between a mother and her children, and the Momma Rule: “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
Big Business Targets Common Core’s Band of Mothers –
The powerful strike back against those who dare question Common Core.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/03/14/big-business-targets-common-cores-band-of-mothers/
LikeLike
Thanks.
Here’s a Tweet with a shortened link that leads to that piece in the Federalist: Anyone may copy and paste into Twitter and then ReTweet often.
Bill Gates & billionaire robber baron gang he runs with
Are attacking mothers who don’t want Common Core in classroom
http://bit.ly/1gupcYl
LikeLike
To the owner of this blog: this posting is timely, revealing, and soberly realistic. Out of thousands, one of the best.
You’ve caught the self-styled “education reformers” with their hands in the cookie jar of $tudent $ucce$$, in the middle of attempting to deflect criticism and evade responsibility by shamelessly lying as fast and as furiously as they can.
To paraphrase the late great Joe Louis:
“They can run but they can’t hide.”
😎
LikeLike
What “employers care about”, has absolutely nothing to do with why most people send their children to school. Neither is it why I continue to teach in this declining educational climate.
What employers need is taught in the home- work ethic, honesty, being a team player, respect, punctuality- just to name a few.
I teach to build and enrich lives, open worlds, stretch minds, cultivate social responsibility. And mathematics fits in there too.
LikeLike
Has it every occurred to any of these jerks that some of us just don’t like having AMATEURS tell us how to do our jobs?
LikeLike
And here:
LikeLike
And here:
LikeLike
But these jerks think public school teachers are incompetent or at least want the rest of the country to believe that as they walk away with billions of taxpayer money while leaving the public schools and democracy in a shambles.
LikeLike