A national one size fits all approach to American education by its very nature lowers academic achievement across the board, neglects the basics, and is ripe for political indoctrination and social manipulation. The downward achievement trend for America and Alabama since Common Core implementation is undeniable. “In its most extreme form, natiohnal control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.” Joseph A Califano, Secretary of HEW under Pres. Carter. Thus, Common Core (CC) produces little socialists and a less educated, less humane populace who may one day be incapable of maintaining freedom.
Common Core is the embodiment of the progressive agenda in math, reading, literature, and history. Some experienced teachers still find ways to teach the basics in spite of CC; but CC hurts low-income students the worst.
Common Core Math
In CC fluency in addition and subtraction is not required until the 4th grade. Multiplication and division are delayed until the 5th and 6th grades. If this two-year delay related to the standard algorithm for each of the four operations [addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division] remains in the standards, successful achievement in math for most students will be doomed as they move into higher grades. Proficiency in math reasoning beginning with Algebra 1 depends on fluency in math operations beginning in the first grade, but CC Alabama delays fluency until 3rd grade with testing in 4th grade. Rather than grading on right answers alone, CC grades young children on the recitation of developmentally inappropriate math reasoning and laborious homework exercises incomprehensible to parents and most children. Common Does Not Equal Excellent
English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects
Literacy
Dr. Louisa Moats, an internationally renowned reading expert was a contributor to Common Core but became very disenchanted its final form:
“The reading program in CC is contributing to the escalating crisis in literacy across America because the standards are deeply flawed and not based in science…insufficient or poor foundational skills including phonics, phoneme awareness, and lack of automatic, fluent word reading in the early years contributes to later literacy problems and failures in children. …There’s language in Common Core that’s not based in reality, that doesn’t reflect how children learn to read. We have decades of data on what it takes for kids to acquire fluency…. There is lots of evidence showing this including studies about what happens in the brain as children learn to read. It is a myth that kids learn…any words ‘by sight.’ They don’t.”
COMMON CORE CONTRIBUTOR DR. LOUISA MOATS BLOWS WHISTLE ON COMMON CORE ‘READING
One learns to read with comprehension and proficiency by encountering increasingly difficult content that engages and instructs. Prior to CC this was accomplished by an emphasis on- time-honored literary texts. CC Standards require children in grade 4 to read 50% ‘information’ vs. literary text; by grade 8 students are to read 55% informational and by grade 12 they are to read 70% informational and 30% literary texts.
Literature
Introduction into the ELA classroom of informational texts such as history, social studies, science and technical subjects results in ELA teachers handling subjects for which they are not prepared. College readiness decreases when “informational reading reduces the study of complex literary texts and literary tradition… Common Core’s secondary ELA standards were not developed or approved by English teachers and humanities scholars, nor were they research-based or internationally benchmarked. …informational texts lend themselves to political indoctrination. Example: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is an anti-capitalist tract presented as a diary of the author’s three-month experiences as a low-wage worker.” How Common Core’s ELA Standards Place College Readiness at Risk by Bauerlein & Stotsky
Upper elementary students cannot do well on NAEP reading “when their language arts curriculum has eliminated the great children’s literature that got them to read – especially boys.” Sandra Stotsky Ph.D. Member of CC Validation Committee
“CC is … taking away the great stories of a great people that teach us how to be good, just, brave, loving and free … to love the beautiful, to find true happiness, to pursue truth. These are the traditional aims of education. … CC smears America with the brush of racism, sexism…” “Story-Killers: A Common Sense Case Against the Common Core” Terrence Moore, PhD
Political Indoctrination
UnboundEd CEO Kate Gerson was employed by the New York DOE to create Common Core-compliant curriculum for Engage NY. Education Week reported, “44 percent of elementary math teachers and 30 percent of secondary teachers in common-core states are using materials from EngageNY.” After a relatively short period of time, EngageNY’s curriculum bank fell under the control of Gerson’s UnboundEd; and her CC curriculum spread across the entire United States. [Gerson’s CC curriculum has been advocated in Alabama for teachers].
Gerson instructs teachers by saying, “If you are under the impression that there are good white people and bad white people, you’re wrong …racial biases are pervasive, universal, and something ‘you cannot be cured from’.”
9 Years Into Common Core, Test Scores Are Down, Indoctrination Up
As described by other curriculum scholars, UnboundEd’s training in reading and math is “grounded in conversations about the roles that race, bias and prejudice play in our schools and classrooms…educators are to be Equity-Change Agents” who must first acknowledge that “we are part of a systematically racist system of education.”
Hess and Addison: Yes, Common Core Is Advancing a Left-Wing Agenda
Davis Coleman is known as the “architect of the Common Core.” He became the president of The College Board (CB) that produces the Advanced Placement [A.P.] tests/study guides and the Pre-SAT and SAT. He publicly stated that all CB products would be aligned with the Common Core, and he has done just that. An Advanced Placement American History text calls Pres. Trump a racist and questions his mental stability; portrays conservatives as heartless racists and sexists…explains opposition to Hilary Clinton as the product of sexism.”
The Story Behind That Anti-Trump Textbook
History
Common Core’s standards writers also call for the ‘cold reading’ of historical documents without any background knowledge to place them in the appropriate historical context. The College Board’s new A.P. U S. History curriculum also mirrors the ideological biases of progressive education…”
“…there are no themes on federalism, separation of powers, the Federalist Papers, or the Gettysburg Address. The curriculum doesn’t ask teachers to teach about Benjamin Franklin and contains no mention of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. The events of September 11, 2001 are never referred to as a terrorist attack.”
U.S. History Instruction Damaged By Common Core Literacy Standards
Poetry
“… in all of the Common Core literary samples…not one of them has anything to do with man’s longing for the divine. That omission cannot be the result of chance…It means that you have to avoid most of Chaucer, much of Shakespeare, and all of Spenser…You cannot include a single sacred lyric by Donne, Herbert, or Hopkins. Milton must be banished… With him goes the greatest and most influential poem in English, ‘Paradise Lost’. Along with Milton goes much of Dryden and Pope and Johnson, much of the best of Wordsworth and Keats, almost all of Coleridge. The fact is that English literature until recently was steeped in Scripture and was preoccupied with the great existential questions of human life, which could not even be posed without reference to faith…Common Core’s English language arts standards reveal the grim irony of the misnomer ‘Common Core,’ for there is no core at all in any set of standards built around a negative: no heart, no shared objects of love, reverence, and memory.” How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction
Parent Alienation from Children and Schools, Teacher and Student Frustration
See the book The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids by Joy Pullman
Articles on Poor Nationwide Achievement by Joy Pullman
May 30, 2019 – “Under Common Core, Federally Funded Study Shows Students’ Test Scores Have Sunk”
October 31, 2019 – First Common Core High School Grads Worst Prepared for College in 15 YearsS
December 5, 2019 – Despite Common Core Promises, U.S. Kids Repeat Poor Performance On Latest Global Test
Polls show well over two-thirds of Alabamians object to “Common Core” yet Alabama schools have never replaced it with sound curriculum.
Eagle Forum of Alabama (205) 879-7096, Eunie Smith, President, Leslie Whitcomb, Education Chairman,
Becky Gerritson, Executive Director …
Last Revised March 2020
