Who Are The Common Core People In Your Neighborhood? Marc Tucker

Today I read an article published in EdWeek called, "Common Core The Real Issues" by a man named Marc Tucker. Here, the writer asserts, 

There has been much Sturm und Drang about the Common Core in recent months, but it looks to me as though the Common Core, in most states, is safe for the time being.  Its name may be changed in some states.  It may suffer from nips and tucks on occasion, but in most states it will emerge into the highlands fairly unscathed.

Goodness! This is quite the statement isn't it? If you haven't been paying attention to the Common Core fight today, nearly every state in the union has some form of legislation against the Common Core. Arguably, fighting the Common Core has become a populist movement in this nation not seen since nationalized health care - but then again, the move to 'nationalize' everything in a country that even decades ago was still the bastion of free-thinking, free-thought and free-economy, can do that to a people not ready for serfdom.

He then goes on to tell us,

Consider what the Common Core is all about.  Prior to the Common Core, the states set their own standards and chose their own tests to measure student progress against those standards.  In a majority of states, students can graduate high school by getting a passing grade on their core high school courses and they could do that mostly just by showing up.

This is bad? Local control is bad? I guess so because he also asserts that the reason why Common Core is causing so much consternation is because we don't also have a national curricula to go with it.

But the states have not developed curricula that will become the basis of their examination systems.  It is hard to imagine us having the kind of success that the top performers have had unless we figure out how to create very powerful and coherent curricula that accurately reflect the intent of the standards and serve as the basis of our examinations. 

Wow. So not only are we to create a national system of standards - and, no matter what parents think or how poor the standards have been shown to be - America should not only continue this trend, but double down by now including curricula? Pardon me while I simply utter "Wow" in the exclamatory.

One last quote from the article with worth mentioning,

The Common Core is far more likely to be declared a failure by the general public because the states failed to implement it well than it is likely to be the victim of the attacks of current critics from either the right or the left.

On one hand, this is as frightening as it sounds, but on the other, really quite expected when you look at Marc Tucker and his vision for US public education. 

Here is information about Tucker from the National Center for Education and the Economy - an organization which he founded and for which he has served as President and Chief Executive Officer since 1988.

Marc has been a leader of the standards-driven education reform movement for many years. Mr. Tucker created New Standards, a 23-state consortium designed to develop internationally benchmarked student performance standards and matching student examinations. He authored the 1986 Carnegie Report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, which called for a restructuring of America’s schools based on standards; created the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; created the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce and co-authored its report, America’s Choice: high skills or low wages!, which called for a new high school leaving a certificate based on standards; and, was instrumental in creating the National Skill Standards Board and served as the chairman of its committee on standards and assessment policy.

The letter Tucker wrote to Hillary Clinton in 1992 - which, coincidentally, shaped the trajectory of public schools in America via the Clinton presidency - explained exactly, and in great detail, how he intended to implement Common Core. 

Clear national standards of performance in general education (the knowledge and skills that everyone is expected to hold in common) are set to the level of the best achieving nations in the world for students of 16, and public schools are expected to bring all but the most severely handicapped up to that standard.

We have a national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations, and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards... 

As with most initiatives created by those convinced government is smarter than individuals, this system is predicated on the notion that nationalization is the only way to create a level playing field for all involved. Teachers can't be expected to help ALL students equally, but a federal mandates will solve that problem nicely. 

NONE OF THIS IS AMERICAN. None of it. As Phyllis Schlafly explains,

Designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of to educate them so they can make their own life choices.

Yes, Tucker's model is predicated on the German system. Knowing this, I found the use of Sturm and Drang in his opening sentence quite telling. Not the student of history I should be, I had to research the term. Here's what I found

(German: "Storm and Stress"), German literary movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism.

Lest we believe 'human individualism' to be the same in Germany as America during this time, it is important to note that 'individualism' in Germany - and other European countries - was antithetical to that which became the model for our Constitution. In fact, this kind of 'individualism' became a rallying cry for national community. 

In other words, Marc Tucker - in the opening sentence of yet another treatise extolling the virtues of education for the collective - tells us plainly he will never give up his socialist vision for America and he will never give up plying that upon school children who he understands can be molded to create this utopia.

I do not understand why more parents haven't awakened to the ultimate goal of today's public education - unification training. The architects of this plan tell you this straight out, it's just that they do so in the most elitist of terms possible, betting on the ignorance of today's population. Do not be ignorant. School your children at home if at all possible. If not, 

1. Stay as active and involved in their educations as you possibly can - to the point of activism. 
2. Run for your local school board, challenge teachers and principals who seem to be more interested in advancing the collective than in fostering the individual growth and spirit of your child. 
3. Opt your children out of every test possible - and those are the majority given today. 
4. Educate your children about the loss of privacy that comes with completing surveys that ask questions that probe into personal or family areas.
5. Opt your child out of every form of data collection possible through the school.
6. Never, never use your social security number to identify your child in a public venue - especially public school.

Tucker's vision for this country via it's public education system must be destroyed. This will take parent education and activism at every level and while seemingly a task of epic proportion, one-by-one states are kicking at their chains and stopping his plan for nationalized standards, aka Common Core. We must continue to fight, and on the days we fail to see light at the end of the tunnel, we must turn to Churchill and agree to "Never, never, never give up". 

Rugged Individualism Be Damned! Socialism's Easier!

Diane Ravitch's latest column, Murdoch’s Bold Move into Education Market, really tested my metal today.  Not so much because of what SHE said, but in reading the comments section I was extremely put off to see so much straight up class warfare.  

Murdoch shouldn't be delving into education because he's RICH and somehow the filth of the earth!  What about mention of Murdoch not getting into education because public education in America shouldn't be privatized?  Nope.  Not so much...okay, at all. 

I don't see how this is helpful on even the atomic scale of smallness.

Vilifying “rich people” and continually engendering class warfare over education will create zero solutions and many more problems, as kids (and parents) are divided into smaller and smaller groups and pitted against each other for one reason or another in the media and literature – gosh, that’s productive. 

I in no way want public education in America privatized. Frankly, today it’s one of the few things America has going for us – the fact that we don’t have to eek out a meager existence in order to afford to send our children to school for even the most basic knowledge. No one mentions this EVER, but privatization of public (common) government in any form is really a form of Fascism, and the central shift away from our Republican form of government in America during the last decade is very troubling to me personally. 

Not only that, but to me, the real enemies in public education today are the founders of this ‘Education Reform’ nonsense. People who are not educators at all really, but are simply just politically connected enough to get their ideas heard. People like Marc Tucker and David Coleman who keep pushing Chinese (Communist) centered education on American children. Truly? We want common standards to commonize every kid in the nation? What happened to individualism? Why are we ‘assessing’ the worth of kids to get a job in elementary school? Why do we feel the need to test kids to make them creative? This is all simply nonsense – and worse – it represents a clear movement away from what public education has stood for in this country since it’s inception – a way to INDIVIDUALLY rise above your circumstances in order to be whatever you want to be (and as rich as you desire!)

Though I feel sadly grim at the prospect, I hope most Americans still have enough ‘common’ sense to see that the ‘common’ public education identified and promulgated by these people since the early 1900′s are exactly what has KILLED American education.

I live on a clinging, yet paltry, hope that those of us who do understand the ramifications and repercussions of the new “education reform” model, are able to sabotage these efforts to create a socialized system of education designed to churn out workers and ‘thinkers’ based on COMMON (socialized) standards and COMMON (socialized) tests, relieving America of the individuality that – until the last couple decades – had made it, in every way, superior to every other country in the world since 1776.