The biggest fight over the Common Core is within conservative ranks.
On one side, supporting Common Core, is Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and big business (last February, 72 major corporations put out a full-page ad supporting the Common Core as necessary for the future of our economy).
On the other is Tea Party activists and other small-government conservatives who worry about federal control of education.
Jeb Bush is clearly the heaviest hitter pushing for Common Core. When ALEC was about to come out against Common Core, Jeb persuaded them to stay neutral.
Now Senator Marco Rubio, one of Jeb’s closest allies, has come out against the Common Core.
We will watch and see how all this shakes out over time.
Clearly, Rubio sees some political advantage in attacking Common Core, even though his patron is its biggest promoter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The last paragraph with the quote from Rhee is typical.
“It’s a weird partisan issue, with a strange bedfellows effect happening,” Michelle Rhee said at the Mackinac conference. “Some way right-wing tea party people don’t like federal mandates, then you’ve got left wing teacher union folks who don’t like accountability for their teachers.”
Hey, Michelle, that’s Rhee-diculous. When did we say we were against accountability? We’re just against accountability as it is currently played (intentional word) by the Feds and many of our state departments of education. Don’t put words on our mouths. I’ll wear the “left wing teacher union folks” name proudly even as a left wing teacher in a right -to-work, oh wait a minute, in a… Hmmmm… I don’t know what to call myself after the NC budget this week. So it doesn’t matter what you call me. Just don’t say I am anti-accountability. Feel free to say that I’m against federal mandates.
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I was just about the make the same point. Thank you for putting it so well.
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When did Michelle Rhee become “conservative”? As far as I know, she’s a lifelong Democrat and an Obamist from way back. In fact, it was reading an article about her in either Time or Newsweek back around December 2007 that tipped me off to the danger of the Obama educational agenda.
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She is identical to Obama. Both are neolibs and fake Democrats.
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I’m telling you this meeting of the minds between conservative republicans, educators and democrats (who right now have only been vocal as a group thru the voice of unions) should be nurtured and could not only bring CCSS down but could open a much broader conversation that this country so needs. How ironic that education reform could actually be the catalyst. If we could all just accept once again that diverse opinions and solutions can be effective rather than an either approach to politics.
It is happening in Louisiana with Tea Party adamantly against CCSS and willing to fight for it. We have a new candidate for Governor (Dem) John Bel Edwards, who is a champion for public education (not a new convert like Rubio/CCSS). I have been invited to speak to large and small Tea Party groups in New Orleans area and use the opportunity to educate on the total reform package. We have no official Democratic voice against CCSS as yet but it would, I believe, be a game changer. Difficult when Sen. Mary Landrieu (Dem) going to be running a tight race and she is pro-reform, TFA, voucher, charter. . . . .
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Let’s be clear about motivations and persuasive measures. Bill Gates gave Jeb Bush $500,000 to love the Common Core. He also gave ALEC $376,635 when they were about to come out against the Common Core. They converted overnight. Bill Gates has placed his senior fellows all over the Obama administration including Arne Duncan’s chief of staff. What Bill Gates wants, Bill Gates buys.
Here is a page from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in which it lists this grant to ALEC.
American Legislative Exchange Council
Date: November 2011
Purpose: to educate and engage its members on efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement
Amount: $376,635
Term: 22
Topic: Global Policy & Advocacy
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia
Grantee Website: http://www.alec.org
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Common Core is going to be destroyed by the Republicans – thank god. I am voting Republican for the rest of my life. We have been betrayed by the Democrats and Obama. This administration has been a nightmare for education. At least the conservatives believe in States rights, etc. Teachers should align themselves with the Republicans now. It’s time for us to change sides. I and many teachers I know will never vote Democrat again.
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Try telling that to the Ohio police, fire fighters, educators, and other public workers who went through SB5.
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I don’t know what the Republicans in your state are like but here in Florida they are the authors and enforcers of the most egregious reforms yet seen. Jeb Bush was just the beginning. Our state legislature is more of a Republican branch of ALEC than a governing body.
There are some Republicans who have fought back, it’s true. They have all been defeated through primaries and are now in the private sector.
Good luck with thinking that Republicans are going to save you and protect you. The party has been opposed to public education from its inception, criticizing it as a form of welfare.
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Posting as anonymous is one clue that you are BS….ing us about your political proclivities. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard some variation of the meme, “I used to vote Democrat, but now I have seen the light” from life long republican voters.
Yes, politicians in both parties are complicit in their attempts to protect the top .01% from the rest of us, mostly because their goal is to keep their own jobs. They will absolutely continue to play favorites and support the interests of the wealthiest in society until the rest of us convince them that they will lose their own jobs if they keep voting against our interests.
Regardless of current political reality, there are deep and significant underlying ideologies that separate the two major parties in this country. While I do not agree with either party on education issues, I would absolutely not vote republican. Not Ever!! The fundamental ideology of the current republican party is archaic, racist, discriminatory, anti women, and abusive to children. Do you honestly believe that republicans have any interest in saving public education, or even saving our democracy for that matter?
It is time to organize our side, and I am not talking democrat or republican here. Which side are you on?
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Also, what teacher would begin a sentence with “I and many teachers I know. . .”
“Many teachers I know and I are. . .”
5th grade English maybe?
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Republicans believe the same as these fake Democrats: They want to destroy public education.
Just because they are correct on Common Core doesn’t mean they are correct on anything else.
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That’s bull! They are correct about having the right to defend yourself. I should have the right to have a gun and defend myself. I shouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the police to come and photograph my body. They are right about limiting the size of the Federal government. If you give people money for doing nothing, you will have a whole lot more people doing nothing. How many people in America are on disability? How many people are on food stamps? They also have a more realistic view of human nature, as our founding fathers did. No, everyone is not nice and kind and there are bad people and governments out there who need to be dealt with harshly and not with kindness (criminals, foreign countries with evil intent, etc). Republicans will leave the states alone, and this is what we need now. We need a hands off approach by the federal government. Romney would have eliminated the Department of Education, and that would have been awesome! To have seen Arne Duncan go back to being a YMCA basketball coach would have been so satisfying to teachers all over the country. He might have been a good basketball coach, but he isn’t an intellectual- at all…When Obama nominated Duncan, then the gig was up for me. I saw that it was all pretend. This blog should be about the “truth” and not partisan. The truth is that no administration has been more harmful to education than the current one in power. This is a fact! This is a “truth.”
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You haven’t actually studied the positions and platforms of the Republican party regarding education, have you? That’s obvious from your repetition of talking points as opposed to “facts”. You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts, however, as Mr. Moynihan pointed out so sagely.
The neoliberals are one and the same with the neoconservatives regarding education. But claiming that electing a Republican president or congressional representatives would end the reforms and the destruction of public schools is an outright lie. NCLB came from George W. Bush and the Texas miracle that wasn’t. School grading and online learning came from Jeb Bush and the Florida miracle that wasn’t. Vouchers came from Milton Friedman. The Republican plan for education is to end all government control and subsidy open it to the free market while injecting religion and capitalism.
Mitt Romney may have tried to close the Dept. of Education; that has been a longstanding goal of the far right, which now controls the Republican party. There is little need for the USDOE now that ALEC, the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the billionaire’s boys’ club control the state legislators under Republican control.
You can be as partisan as you choose but it is pretty obvious to me that neither party is friendly to teachers, schools, or the concept of public education and blaming the reforms on partisan politics instead of the oligarchy plays well into their plan to keep us from bringing about actual change.
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I would also like to interject that nobody on this blog wants to admit, respond to or research the possibility that Common Core is nothing more than UNESCO’s tool to indoctrinate our children with the concepts and goals of Agenda 21. It’s really hard to establish one world government if you have a bunch of rugged individualist Americans who believe in national sovereignty and the Constitution.
The U.S. Department of Education was instituted in 1979 as a promise to put the principles of Sustainable Development in place. The NEA, National Education Association, founded by John D. Rockefeller, rallied support for Jimmy Carter for this purpose. He made the deal and he kept his promise.
Education for Sustainability Toolkit was written at the University of Tennessee in 2002 and published by the U.S. Department of Education. The same book has been reprinted in 2006 and again in 2013 by UNESCO. “Generally, more highly educated people who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat of sustainability.” Common Core is designed to dumb children down.
Common Core is way bigger than Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals. It is being pushed by some of the wealthiest Eugenicists in the world: Bill Gates and John Rockefeller. It is not just a skill based set of stupid standards. It is the vehicle by which public education will be destroyed.
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Amen, Dawn!
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Come on, this has nothing to do with common core standards or even education. If it did, there would be a very different cast of characters. CCSS is the excuse.
President Obama et al promote the standards because they think it will drive the train to higher test scores and teacher rankings and kids learning. Bad answers being found in all the wrong places.
The States Rights crowd are using it as their “Don’t Tread on Me” moment – no one is going to tell Mississippi or Kansas how to teach science (excluding evolution).
The corporate crowd only sees CC$$.
And who’s not at the table? Educators. If these folks really cared an iota about standards they would ask the content people who know what their talking about: NCTE, NCTM, NSTA, NCSS, NMEA, and other professional organizations and the policy and practice people who know what they are talking about: AASA, NSBA, and the professional development departments of the unions.
The education debate has been relegated to politicians, CEOs, and self-appointed rock stars whose dozens of two year stints could be listed on a t-shirt like a concert tour. Odd, I don’t hear them harping over AMA standards, cancer research, or brain surgery.
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I would go even deeper and drill down to Rockefeller money and interests. David Rockefeller has already outed himself and his family for being anti-American supporters of a one world government on page 405 of his Memoirs. He and Bill Gates are huge supporters of the UN as the vehicle to bring about one world government through compliance with “sustainable development.” Bill Gates has invested over $173 million in bringing the Common Core into the implementation phase. He has placed key people in Obama’s administration. People think the CC is just an empty set of skill based standards, which it looks like at first glance. However, when you put Pearson (Bill Gates) and PARCC in charge of creating tests and texts, which contain content, now you see where the sustainable development indoctrination is going to come in.
The curriculum is about values, attitudes and behaviors, not facts and knowledge. It is designed to create a surveillance apparatus for students and teachers. The DSM will be used to label nonconformists as sick people in need of drugs. Go back and read Marc Tucker’s “Dear Hillary” letter and see how it took a few years but it’s all happening now with the Common Core. Hillary Clinton is all about sustainability, the politically correct term for Agenda 21. George Bush Sr. attended the “Earth Summit” and signed onto the non-binding Treaty in 1992 along with 178 other heads of state. 1500 corporations and NGO’s where at this event as well. This was a game changing event that has slipped under the radar. Bill Clinton codified Agenda 21 in 1993 when he created the “President’s Council on Sustainable Development”, a panel on which every cabinet level official had a seat. They have used their positions to put UN goals into U.S.policy.
This is not a theory. This is history. These books and reports and speeches are published. The problem is there are probably a lot of people on this blog who have already drank the Koolaid and think that sustainable development and “smart growth” and smart meters and smart appliances are a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the land, water, air and sea. I just love my national sovereignty and the rights guaranteed by my unique Constitution even more. I can be a good steward of the earth without regulations from UN appointed regional managers telling me what I can and cannot do. The real purpose of the Common Core is to create docile “global citizens.” Successful students of the CC will learn to accept being stacked and packed in urban centers while the animals will be allowed to roam freely in designated wilderness areas that will comprise 50% of the U.S. Our youngest citizens will learn not to question why.
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When has this ever been a liberal/conservative issue? I am part of a large group of teachers who are both liberal and supportive of the CCSS. I also know that, in the community where I live, the loudest vocal opponents of the CCSS come from the far right. On the national stage, I see supporters and opponents of CCSS on both the right and the left.
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Not where I’m from. Demographics playinto it. My school district although 47% free and reduced lunch also enjoys many students from Republican high income parents who can afford private schools. Like most things. People need to be educated in those areas they are not familiar with. This is a bi-partisan mess.
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It’s obvious by this time that educrats and politicians from both parties are either unable or unwilling to get it right. Since the feel-good 60s with the self-esteem movement that came from California, our country’s public education system has been declining.
In 1994 the Ds made sure the High School Competency Test, given at an 8th grade level to 10th graders, was “ajusted” to make sure the the number who failed would be no more that year than the prior year. This year the Rs and many Ds “adjusted” the FCAT scores to try to distract from the ugly reality.
So it’s no surprise that so many are moving to the charter schools, most of which aren’t that much better than regular public schools, or private schools, many of which are. And both charters and private schools limit the special ed students that attend. The homeschoolers are the only group that outperforms all of them.
And now the educrats and those who will profit from this new and improved version of reform, called Common Core, complete with data mining, are trying to sell snake oil once again. Not to mention the money many of them will make from the new “standards” and technology required.
If we can’t find leaders who are willing to get back to basics, using technology not as substitutes for teachers, the public education system will become a minor bit player. What that would create isn’t clear to anyone at this point. But unless we get it right, down that road we’ll surely go.
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I applaud Senator Rubio’s desire to empower parents, local communities and states. Had the CCSS been developed by each states’ top teachers in each grade level and the federal government and friends had stayed out of it, I would not have the concerns about CCSS that I do. However, just voting Republican is not the answer… Christie is a Republican, Jyndal is a Republican and Jeb Bush is a Republican. Regan, who first declared the war on public education was a Republican. I am learning to contact all candidates in any campaign for an Office that has the power to affect education and ask them what their position regarding education is.
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I trust NEITHER.
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Rubio may have to run against Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries. The corporate reform agenda is hated by ordinary people who vote, whichever party they’re in. They call it by different names, and look for the usual culprits in their own minds. (Unesco! I had to laugh. But look, if you already hate “liberals”, can you learn to say “neoliberal”?)
Rubio did the math correctly, I think. He can’t win his primary on corporate bucks alone, and a couple of recent elections have shown their electoral support can be toxic and career-ending.
Let’s make sure Democratic candidates get the same message.
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While I am all for using the Tea Party to defeat CC, let’s remember why Rubio is doing this…..He needs to offset the criticism he got for endorsing immigration reform. You see, you cannot deviate from the Right-winged Tea Party and not feel repercussions.
As for voting Dem or Republican, nowadays it’s hard to tell the difference. Both are now charter supporters and they both want to dismantle social security and Medicare by cutting benefits. But more importantly, these issues are being driven by ALEC and Gates.
It comes down to the money. When politicians and teacher unions take money from Gates, then they will push his agenda. Why else would union leaders now be defending InBloom?
So we vote the lesser of the 2 evils. We need more Democratic candidates who are not neoliberals.
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