Common Core Defeats Pile Up

Common Core, as it is known to the American public, has seen significant setbacks in recent months as parents and teachers have staged an open revolt against the government-mandated education standards. Its official name, the Common Core State Standards, was a one-size-fits-all education standard given by the federal government in English and math for grades K-12. However, the standards were put into place by private organizations and committees, but not approved by lawmakers or voters.

As we have noted, Common Core has a weirdly bipartisan coalition supporting it consisting of current Democratic officeholders such as the president and former Republican governors like Florida’s Jeb Bush. Parents of all parties, meanwhile, have opposed the CC standards.

Indeed, parental rights are under siege across the United States:

• Missouri Democratic Governor Jay Nixon signed House Bill 1490 to replace Common Core with the state’s own curriculum
• South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley repealed Common Core by signing a repeal bill
• Oklahoma’s Supreme Court rejected the state education board’s lawsuit that Common Core should remain in place, after the state legislature and Republican Governor Mary Fallin repealed Common Core due to intense parent pressure

In other education-related news…

• Wisconsin, in trying to make school voucher programs more transparent, has passed new rules to require charter schools to “provide more data to state and federal governments.” Part of this requirement is to hand over personal information about their students and teachers, along with all students receiving “a unique student ID number.” Some worry this is an invasion of privacy by collecting data on children.
• A North Carolina judge allowed nearly 2,400 North Carolina schoolchildren to continue to attend the school of their choice while two lawsuits are handled. The lawsuits contend that the school voucher funds should not be used to send children in low-income areas to private schools, but instead they should be sent to public schools.
• A father of four children in Nevada, John Eppolito, asked his state’s Department of Education for information that they have on his children. The state said that obtaining this information would cost Eppolito “approximately $10,194.” The reasoning is, “the system currently is not capable of responding to the type of individual student data request you have presented.”
• Property taxes continue to rise for Pennsylvania parents due to loophole in state law, where 164 Pennsylvania school districts are using it to pay for rising pension costs.
• Federal education rules are now leading to bloated state education bureaucracies, with 40% of state agency paperwork solely geared to complying with federal regulations.
• There are 26 Cristo Rey Catholic schools, and what makes them different is that one day a week, their students are employed by professional organizations to earn back a part of their high school tuition. They also receive professional development training and skill development as a part of the program.

Related Topics