Michelle Malkin Comes Out Against Common Core Standards

From the National Review and Michelle Malkin on Common Core Standards:

America’s downfall doesn’t begin with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student.
 

For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity, and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western-civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers, and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed grouping students by ability to be bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling, and multicultural claptrap.

Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but set the achievement bar high.

Read more here.

Calls for Abolishment of the Department of Education Continue

You may have read one of our latest blogs about a teacher in the trenches and Neal McCluskey, Cato Education writer, agreeing the Department of Education should be abolished:

http://missourieducationwatchdog.blogspot.com/2010/08/teacher-and-cato-institute-hit-bullseye.html

Here we have another viewpoint from New York state and the National Review Online:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244804/race-nowhere-john-derbyshire

Some of Derbyshire's ideas are tongue-in-cheek, but he raises good points. The same points our teacher and McCluskey made in their statements. Not all students are college material, mandating standards is not wise, more funding does not guarantee success, and we don't have the money to implement these programs. Oh, one more tiny problem...it's not constitutional.

Is anybody in Washington listening? The chatter is becoming increasingly louder and more strident.