Washington, D.C.–At an event last Friday, Paul Reville, a Harvard professor and former secretary of education in Massachusetts, used the platform to make some assertions about Common Core, and those who are against it.
The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, hosted the event where Reville made comments that ruffled feathers on both the left and the right.
CNSNews.com asked about the opponents of Common Core who say federal funding is a motivating factor behind states implementing these new standards. Reville dismissed the idea of critics, saying, “To be sure, there’s always a small voice — and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments — of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability, and those voices get amplified.”
“But those are a tiny minority,” he added.
Reville stated that the only reason people are latching onto Common Core’s federally funded origin is because it “privileges certain sort of fringe voices about federalism and states’ rights, and things of that nature.”
The federally implemented standards do tend to rile up those that hold the belief that the government doesn’t know what’s best for their children. Reville sidestepped those arguments with all the grace of a statist.
“Why should some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us?”
That type of mindset is exactly why homeschooling is growing seven times faster than public school enrollment.
Reville also asserted that Common Core is not a federally mandated curriculum, saying “people have voluntarily entered into this agreement.”
Ya, those billions in federal funding and waivers left over from No Child Left Behind had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Common Core is currently being implemented by 45 states and the District of Columbia, but the lack of research before it was shoved into place has left educators at a loss for how to impart the Common Core standards. Now conservative and liberal groups are banding together to stop this train wreck before it causes any more damage.
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