CT News Junkie | OP-ED | Politicians Underestimate Common Core Opposition at Their Peril

CT News Junkie | OP-ED | Politicians Underestimate Common Core Opposition at Their Peril:

OP-ED | Politicians Underestimate Common Core Opposition at Their Peril

by Sarah Darer Littman | Mar 21, 2014 12:03am 
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Posted to: Education, Opinion

SARAH DARER LITTMAN

Thanks to Republican legislators who used a rare parliamentary procedure to get a bill asking for a moratorium raised for public hearing, Connecticut finally got to experience a lengthy airing of views on the Common Core and its implementation thus far in our state.

Republicans had to resort to such strategies because, for reasons that can only be known to them, Democrats in the legislature tried to limit “hearings” on Common Core implementation to what amounted to a PR session with Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor and Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which is one of the organizations that helped draft the standards. Hardly a well-rounded airing of views — but then that doesn’t appear to have been what the governor and his allies wanted.

Democrats from Arne Duncan on down are trying to frame the growing nationwide revolt by parents, K-12 educators, university professors, and child development specialists as “Tea Party extremism” or overwrought “white suburban moms.” A recent Hartford Courant piece by UConn professor Robert Thorson simplistically categorized those who question the Core as anti-Copernican opponents of science. As a devoted Neil deGrasse Tyson fangirl, I can think of no greater insult.

Such diatribes are foolish and myopic. Common Core proponents need to face a very important fact: parents are not idiots. Those of us with older children can see