◼ Watch the video. Small’s crime is daring to ask questions and refusing to be intimidated by the Common Core mafia. - Michelle Malkin
◼ Jeb Bush’s latest Common Core snit fit - Michelle Malkin
Jeb Bush routinely has dismissed those who protest Common Core’s increasing federalization of local control over schools as conspiracy-mongers. But it’s President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan who’ve made common cause with Bush and corporate elites in foisting Common Core standards, tests, technology and data-mining boondoggles on local school districts. Obama, Duncan and Bush have been meeting with deep-pocketed CEOs in Washington, not with ordinary parents outside the Beltway.
Dr. Bill Evers of the Hoover Institution succinctly debunked Bush’s repeated insistence that 45 states voluntarily adopted the irresistibly rigorous standards:
“(S)tates weren’t leaping because they couldn’t resist the Core’s academic magnetism. They were leaping because it was the Great Recession — and the Obama administration was dangling a $4.35 billion Race to the Top carrot in front of them. Big points in that federal program were awarded for adopting the Core, so, with little public debate, most did.”◼ And, in Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer ordered her agencies to stop using the term “Common Core’’ when referring to new education standards, in response to hostility from critics over what they see as a federal intrusion.... Common core name changes, standards remain... - Arizona Daily Star
In an executive order, the governor said she was “reaffirming Arizona’s right to set education policy.” Her order spells out “no standards or curriculum shall be imposed on Arizona by the federal government.”
But it concedes the standards adopted by the state Board of Education in 2010 already are being implemented. And Brewer herself referred to them as Common Core in her State of the State speech and her budget request to the Legislature.
Press aide Andrew Wilder said the order changes nothing except the name, which going forward will be “Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards.’’
...“This is just changing the window dressing,” said Diane Douglas, a Republican running for state school superintendent. She remains convinced that, whatever the name, the standards being implemented are essentially being forced on Arizona by the federal government.
◼ Now they’re arresting people who complain about the Common Core - Eric Owens/Daily Caller
