“Common Core is a state-led initiative.” This sentence is among the most repeated pitch lines of those selling Common Core. It is an effective sales pitch, but is it true? The answer lies in the maze of money and regulation tying federal and state departments of education together. Let’s start with the money. The money is always the carrot that the federal government offers the states. The money trail for Common Core begins in 2009, with the passage of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, commonly called the Stimulus Bill. Among the bill’s many provisions was a $53.6 billion appropriation to the U.S. Department of Education, called the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Of that amount, $4.35 billion was set aside for the Race to the Top initiative. States had to access the funds in a prescribed order. First was the Stabilization fund program...... A visit to the web site for the Common Core State Standards, reveals that the standards are the copyrighted property of the NGA Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and may only be used if a public license is obtained. The same web site states that every user of the standards must acknowledge this ownership, except states. States are exempted from sharing this information with their citizens. So the money in the federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and Race to the Top were the carrots. What was the stick? The stick was federal regulation. And it was a big one. Federal regulations implementing No Child Left Behind required every state to prove that 100 percent of its students were proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-2014 school year, with substantial penalties for failure to demonstrate that it had attained this impossible goal. Read more: crisismagazine/2013/the-federal-hand-behind-common-core
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 05:08:39 +0000
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