Totalitarians Threaten States Attempting to Pull Out of the ‘Voluntary’ Common Core
May 12, 2014
By Sara Noble
States dropping out of Common Core are being threatened by the federal government. For those of you who thought Common Core was voluntary, think again. It is meant to infringe on states’ rights and it does put the feds in complete control of every school curricula in the country. What’s more, they will make it impossible to drop it.
Common Core is a rotten apple
Last December, California had a bill that would only delay data collection of K-12 student achievement based on the standardized testing so the California Board of Education could better prepare. They planned to replace it with their highly regarded Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress (MAPP) for one year. Arne Duncan threatened to take their federal aid away.
Arne Duncan put it this way:
“A request from California to not measure the achievement of millions of students this year is not something we could approve in good conscience. Raising standards to better prepare students for college and careers is absolutely the right thing to do, but letting an entire school year pass for millions of students without sharing information on their schools’ performance with them and their families is the wrong way to go about this transition.”
“No one wants to over-test, but if you are going to support all students’ achievement, you need to know how all students are doing. If California moves forward with a plan that fails to assess all its students, as required by federal law, the Department will be forced to take action, which could include withholding funds from the state.”
Indiana was the first state to drop out and develop their own standards. The feds are now saying they will withdraw Indiana’s No Child Left Behind waiver which will seriously impact funding.
Indiana State Board of Education member Brad Oliver told Chalkbeat he has not seen the letter. “Based on what I know right now, I am very concerned that our waiver could be in jeopardy,” he said. “The repercussions of losing our waiver are more than just financial. It would immediately have an impact on local districts.”
“States didn’t have to adopt the Common Core in order to get a federal waiver from the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act,” Education Week notes. “Instead, they simply have to adopt standards that will get students ready for college or the workforce. Common core counts, but a state can also use standards that have gotten the seal of approval from its post-secondary institutions. (Virginia, for example, went this route.)”
There is an enormous amount of money involved in Common Core and the totalitarians are not going to let this opportunity slip through their hands now that they’ve lured so many states into it.
Missouri voted to drop out and not develop standards similar to the Core as Indiana has done. They can count their funding gone.
More information at Enterprise News and at the Sentinel.
http://www.independentsentinel.com/totalitarians-threaten-states-attempting-to-pull-out-of-the-voluntary-common-core/
