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| Citizens from all political sides want to reclaim educational freedom |
The Left-Right Alliance for Education has issued a statement on its objection to Common Core State standards. The group's mission:
“The Left-Right Alliance for Education” was formed to bring together education reform advocates from across the political spectrum, and across the nation, to determine if it is possible to form a multi-partisan alliance for countering the current federal/corporate alliance driving education reform policy. The members of the Left/Right Alliance for Education understood on a basic level that to be successful in countering the CCSSI we needed to, 1) set aside those points of opposition that are highly partisan, 2) create a clear and succinct message of mutual opposition to Common Core, 3) make it clear that these points of opposition are shared by people from all over the political spectrum, and 4) appeal to the universal desire that all parents have for their children’s education, which is not just to be “career-ready”, but more importantly to become mature thinkers who are highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals who know their own minds and who are prepared to thrive in any life path they choose.The full statement can be found here.
I was invited to contribute to this effort and am proud to support this group in its mission to unite those from the left and the right against Common Core standards. The CCSS proponents can no longer authentically state that it's "teapartiers", "crazy rightwingers", "rightwing nutjobs" or whatever disparaging label they wish to slap on those who question why/how Common Core was adopted/implemented. Here is a graph from the contributors on their political alignment to this joint effort:
Political Alignment:
Participants in group effort were from a well-balanced a broad political spectrum. Contributors were asked to classify their politics and the graph below was the result:
How will the reformers counter the alliance's core beliefs? How will they attempt to marginalize citizens across all political alignments?
- We oppose the philosophy of standardization built into all federal education initiatives, including the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
- We oppose high-stakes testing.
- We oppose a national student data system.
