The Common Core State Standards for K-12 schools are being implemented in most states in English language arts and math. The Common Core is designed to replace local and parental control over education with centralized, top-down control. It is another federal government power grab, another attack against the tenth amendment to the United States Constitution, which states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
By empowering the federal government to control public school curricula the Common Core program is also in direct violation of three federal statutes. The General Education Provisions Act, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), ban the Department of Education from directing, supervising, or controlling elementary and secondary school curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials.
Common Core is another example of the Obama Administration’s blatant disregard for the laws of our land. Based on investigations in committees of the House of Representatives, there are more than 40 examples of the Obama Administration’s going around Congress to make its own “laws,” ignoring existing laws, circumventing the regulatory process, making its own “law” by waiving existing laws, creating “super agencies,” and setting up federal programs that were not authorized by Congress.
Around the world, fascist dictators have a long history of taking control over education. Hitler, Mao, Castro, and others have made education a high priority because they understood the importance of indoctrinating the next generation. That is precisely what our Constitution and our federal laws were designed to avoid.
The Common Core Curriculum has already been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. So why have so many states jumped on the bandwagon? Proponents claim states have adopted the standards voluntarily. However, the truth is our federal government bribed them with large amounts of money. The Obama Administration used $4.35 billion from the 2009 stimulus package, which was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to launch the largest federal government initiative in the history of American education. A program called “Race to the Top” was created to bribe state governments to adopt the Common Core Curriculum.
Texas rejected the Common Core after their analysis showed the cost to implement the program was greater than the bribe amount offered from the federal government. Other states where the program was adopted are now discovering the high costs as well as the shortcomings of the curriculum. For example, last month Florida Governor Rick Scott ordered his state to reverse course on basing their tests on Common Core Standards.
Proponents of the Common Core claim that the initiative for the new curriculum was state-led. However, that is not true either. No state legislatures or school boards were involved in the development of this curriculum. The program was created by well-funded private organizations then heavily promoted to the states by the federal government through the use of bribe money.
A non-profit group called Achieve, Inc primarily drafted the national standards used by the Common Core Curriculum. After getting shot down in Congress with their National Curriculum proposed in 1995, they realized they needed to make this look like a state driven initiative so they went to the national Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Both of those our trade associations based in Washington DC. Neither of them had a grant of legislative authority from states to write national school standards. However, because the common core standards were created under their auspices the proponents of the common core standards now claim that their efforts were state led.
Achieve, Inc. is funded by private sources, especially the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation has already spent over $100 million toward the Common Core and has plans to spend another $150 million. For Microsoft, the company founded by Bill Gates, this is a business investment because the common core standards require the use of new technology and software products, which the schools will purchase from Microsoft. In the long run, Microsoft is likely to more than recover their upfront investment.
An informative video has been produced to educate Americans about this program. This video shows why parents, teachers, and legislators must demand that their states reconsider their hasty decisions to adopt the Common Core and again reassert their constitutional control over education. The video is titled: “Stop the National Common Core Power Grab: Reclaim Local Control of Education”. The video:
- Explains the origin of the Common Core – its genesis with private, progressive education interests in Washington, DC – and how the federal government imposed it on the states by tying its adoption to a chance at Race to the Top grants.
- Demonstrates that by adopting the Common Core, a state relinquishes its control over what is taught in its schools and paves the way for a national curriculum designed by unaccountable entities in Washington.
- Explains that the standards not only lack “rigor,” but in fact will diminish the education our children receive in English language arts and mathematics.
- Outlines the problems with the national tests that are being designed – behind closed doors – to align with the Common Core.
- Shows why the costs of implementing the Common Core will dwarf any federal grants received as a reward for adopting the standards.
- Reveals the federal dictates to build massive student-data systems so that students can be individually tracked from preschool through career – all in the name of producing “workers” who can “compete in the global economy.”
There are five parts to the video. All are linked below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
If we do not take action now to prevent this destructive experiment on our children, it will soon be too late to stop it. Get more news and information about the Common Core at the Stop Common Core website.
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