Patty St. Martin of New Orleans remembers that candidate Donald Trump promised to get rid of Common Core.
He has forgotten that promise. He speaks today to the National Governors Association. No mention of Common Core. Does he know what it is?
St. Martin writes:
“Alert! No mention of No to Common Core in the Agenda below. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but most all our USA governors ushered in Common Core under Obama. I’m wondering WHY all the groups and mothers/families/friends of school children aren’t speaking up at this event which was this morning?
“These groups against Common Core can still tweet or FB something. Don’t let this opportunity to be heard just slip away. Shouldn’t it be time to engage our current administration in the perils of common core since it is an issue that plagues us ALL. If our POTUS is for common core instead of against it, then he needs to quickly be educated. It seems our past POTUS wasn’t on top of pro-common core. I believe Trump ran in his campaign that he would stop common core. If so, shouldn’t he kindly be asked why Common Core isn’t even on this agenda below?
“Maybe he doesn’t realize it was ushered in by the Governors of each State? It’s an issue we’ve been fighting against for years now with Governors of each State set in motion in a past administration.
“Stopping Common Core has always been critical. This meeting below would have been a wonderful opportunity for those against Common Core to speak up. I just saw this so didn’t realize the Governors were in DC for the National Governors Association, a group which claims they are bi-partisan yet it was the Governors of each State who brazenly ushered in Common Core while our POTUS at the time allowed it to happen. This seems like a missed opportunity to educate against Common Core unless the moment can still be salvaged. Just a thought.”
This morning, President Donald J. Trump is welcoming about 40 of the Nation’s governors to the White House for a business session covering infrastructure, workforce development, opioids, school safety, and other important issues facing America in the year ahead.
The governors are in town for a winter meeting of the National Governors Association, a bipartisan organization founded in 1908. Thirty-three of the Nation’s governors are Republicans, 16 are Democrats, and one is an independent. Of the 16 Democrats, 11 are expected to join the President today.
The governors will attend 8 working sessions with senior Administration officials, with topics including:
Improving investment in American infrastructure
Addressing barriers to workforce development
Bringing down healthcare costs through better competition
Driving rural prosperity and growth
Combating America’s opioid crisis
Reforming U.S. prisons to reduce repeat offenses
Keeping our schools safe and protecting children from violent crime
Bonus read: Learn how President Trump’s infrastructure plan will boost the role of states.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“If our POTUS is for common core instead of against it, then he needs to quickly be educated.” — what for? Common Core is not a federally-mandated program, DOE is not a Ministry of Education, and POTUS is nothing more than an executive, whos main role is to shake hands with world leaders. After all, the laws in this country are supposed to be created by Congress, members of which are supposed to be elected by citizens, so who cares whether POTUS knows anything about Common Core? Even if he had any authority on repealing it, I support this particular promise he did not keep. Common Core has been a step forward in the right direction, waiting for Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography to be included as well. Just drop the centralized and corporatized testing, which does not make any difference for students.
LikeLike
“Common Core has been a step forward in the right direction,”
Horse manure. It’s been a boondoggle from the beginning. Where was the consensus on the making of the CCSS? There was none. None of the protocols, whether national or international, for making “standards” were followed making the supposed standards a bastard step-child to begin with.
Standards are not curriculum which is what D. Coleman and his ilk would have you believe, and you John Doe, appear to have swallowed that stinkbait and are gut hooked.
Tell me John Doe: How did the country get to be the supposed top dog nation of the world without national educational standards?
National standards are nothing more than the equivalent of a Soviet 5 year plan for education, lot’s of bloviating and false concepts put forth as the “truth” of education. Tain’t buying that bullshit!
LikeLike
@Duane,
I already explained in another comment why I firmly believe in good, reliable, durable national standards, I do not see a reason to repeat myself. You, on the other hand, generated nothing but fumes. You conflate Soviet economic 5-year plan with national education standards and then proclaim that this won’t work. I have no desire to argue with something that has no logic whatsoever.
LikeLike
I advocated for national standards for many years. I gave up when the Common Core was written in secret, financed by one man, never field tested and imposed on schools by a $5 Billion bribe called Race to the Top. That, plus the fact that national standards do nothing to reduce poverty, segregation, and inequality.
LikeLike
Please link your explanation in the other comment as I don’t have any clue where to find it and therefore cannot answer to your it. Gracias.
LikeLike
Common Core being written in secret, never field tested and imposed on schools by a $5 Billion bribe has nothing to do with its quality. The heavily-greased $1 billion contract between the Los Angeles school district, Apple, and Pearson to buy iPads for every student says nothing about the quality of iPads themselves. Just because the Feds bailed out General Motors ten years ago does not mean that GM cars are complety unusable. Just because the ULA rockets cost about $400 million per launch does not mean they are technically inferior to Elon Musk’s rockets (granted, Musk’s rocket can land their first stages). Yes, it would be nice to have a field test beforehand, but now we had it for a decade, why throwing away a working program? It can be improved, but I like its attention to concepts instead of rote memorizing (that is about math, cannot say much about ELA, but my son reads lots of books, so whatever they miss at school is sort of being compensated at home). Search for “Math-U-See”, it is a curriculum for home schoolers. I am not affiliated with them, I learned about them a while ago, watched some videos on YouTube, they have a charismatic founder. Their approach is very similar to Common Core, giving more time to concepts and letting information to settle in. They do not do spiral, they do ladder or mastery or whatever you call it. They changed less than 10% of their program to align it with Common Core. In fact, one may think that Common Core authors copied some ideas from this guy, and because his program was already fielded for a decade or so, Common Core got implicitly validated.
As to national standards doing nothing to reduce poverty, segregation, and inequality, I would be very surprised if they did. These are educational standards, not food stamps or cash money.
P.S. This is former John Doe; I will be signing my messages as Mullov from “mull over” from now on. Not sure whether I will be visiting often
LikeLike
John Doe or Mullov,
Farewell.
I have written educational standards for states. I oversaw efforts to develop national standards in the 1990s, written by educators. I know about how complicated it is, and how counterproductive. Don’t waste your time or breath hoping for something that will never happen and never make a difference.
LikeLike
“it was
the Governors of each Stateour POTUS who brazenly ushered in Common Core whileour POTUSthe Governors of each State at the time allowed it to happen”Fixed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
POTUS at the time, Obama (with help from Arne Duncan and Bill Gates)
LikeLiked by 1 person
and all of that RttT money and exactly how it was spent must NEVER be forgotten
LikeLike
Common Core is many things, and it is unwise to consider all of it an ill-conceived experiment by evil plutocrats. Its approach to teaching math is better that what was used before: less drill and kill and more conceptual understanding. Of course, as it always happens, good ideas were beaten into teachers, who in turn gave their students hundreds of similar problems with box models, tape diagrams, relationship trees and such. Moderation is key.
Also, many elementary and even middle-school teachers are not good in math themselves, and many parents are even worse. I agree with Arne Duncan on this one: “white suburban moms [for whom] — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
LikeLike
Don’t forget the joint press conference with Michigan’s ex-govenor John Engler and Randi Weingarten, saying “hold the course on Common Core”.
LikeLike