Get To Know the Common Core Marketing Overlords

[happyg]

Michelle Malkin | Mar 21, 2014

They're everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV, The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families to support the beleaguered federal education standards/testing/technology racket. Who's funding these public relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big Business interests.

The foundational myth of Common Core is that it's a "state-led" initiative with grassroots support that was crafted by local educators for the good of all of our children. But the cash and power behind the new ad campaign tell you all you need to know. For parents in the know, this will be a refresher course. But repeated lies must be countered with redoubled truths.

The Bipartisan Policy Center is one of the leading Common Core ad sponsors. It's a self-described nonprofit "think tank" founded by a pantheon of Beltway barnacles: former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell.

"Lobbying tank" would be more accurate. The BPC's "senior fellows" include K Street influence peddlers such as liberal Republican Robert Bennett, the big-spending Utah senator-turned-lobbyist booted from office by tea party conservatives; former Democratic Agriculture Secretary and House member-turned-lobbyist Dan Glickman; and liberal Democrat Byron Dorgan, the former North Dakota senator who crusaded as an anti-D.C. lobbying populist before retiring from office to work as, you guessed it, a D.C. lobbyist.

Jeb Bush's "Foundation for Excellence in Education" is also saturating the airwaves with ads trying to salvage Common Core in the face of truly bipartisan, truly grassroots opposition in his own home state of Florida. As I've reported previously, the former GOP governor's foundation

is tied at the hip to the federally funded testing consortium called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), which pulled in $186 million through the Obama administration's Race to the Top program to develop Common Core tests.

One of the Bush foundation's top corporate sponsors is Pearson, the multibillion-dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate. Pearson snagged $23 million in contracts to design the first wave of PARCC test items and $1 billion for overpriced, insecure Common Core iPads purchased by the Los Angeles Unified School District, and is leading the $13.4 billion edutech cash-in catalyzed by Common Core's technology mandates.

More of article at link: http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2014/03/21/get-to-know-the-common-core-marketing-overlords-n1812206

[Oceander]

Never seen a Common Core ad on television.

The only real problem with common core is the way some of the states have implemented it: all at once without giving the kids or the teachers - or the parents - time to get accustomed to the new standards and the broader curriculum those standards require.

The next time my daughter brings home the common core math workbook her class uses, I'll try to scan and post some of the pages because, gosh darn it, some of those homework assignments are rather good.

[jmyrlefuller]

Never seen a Common Core ad on television.

Nor have I. I watch a fairly diverse selection of TV shows (admittedly not all that often) and have not seen a single ad for Common Core.

Not that Ms. Malkin would believe you; after all, she needs to maintain her constant state of paranoia.

[olde north church]

I see them quite often.  3 "teachers" and oh so caring.