FOUR IMPORTANT MYTHBUSTERS ABOUT THE COMMON CORE

This piece is written to help clarify many misunderstandings about who designed the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), who supports it, and who opposes it. These clarification are necessary for any sustainable “coalition of the sane” to work together to dismantle it. I am not attacking my Conservative friends here. I think many of us from all sides the political spectrum can find enough common ground, built on a reality of facts, and to work together so long as we have shared visions and goals.

But if you are one of those persons (or groups) who is promoting any of these myths I listed here I have a request: Stop it. You’re scaring people. And you are disrupting the opportunities for others to develop any collaborative informed, fact-driven efforts to fight for public schools and our children. Expounding on these myths does nothing but lend fodder to pro CCSS corporate reformers to discredit the opposition to CCSS. Ignorance and fear are not the elements upon which a sustainable movement can be built.

There are folks (aka myth makers) who might not like progressive values or ideals. That’s fine. I am not asking anyone to like them. But I humbly request we remain clear that progressives (like many conservatives) historically have been, and are, opposed to Common Core and other tentacles of education reform.

If you are someone perpetuating these myths to communities or parents you’d be better off telling them to duck and cover beneath a school desk because the atomic bomb is coming. It’s 2013. Welcome to the world of (inter)nationalized/corporate-dominated interests. It defies traditional left/right political bifurcations, and breeds itself on a philosophy of greed and power. And it’s happy to see you waste energy attacking the wrong “enemy” (unless of course, in keeping with the ideology of ALEC co-founder Paul Weyrich, this is truly your goal).

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