Liberals and Tea Party Find Common Ground with Common Core
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(Photo: Barbara Haddock Taylor, Baltimore Sun)
Few if any political issues have brought together liberals and the tea party to the extent that the Common Core State Standards have. How can something be equally objectionable to political opposites?
Tea partiers ideologically oppose just about any federal program — especially anything with the Obama name on it. But does political ideology explain liberals’ opposition to Common Core?
Ideologically speaking, it is baffling that any liberal would adopt the education reform agenda with its call to deregulate schools as a public good, and destabilize labor unions which have historically been huge supporters of the Democratic party. (Although one only has to consider neo-liberalism to understand the call to privatize.)
But, in education, for liberal politicians, money trumps ideology. Politicians simply cannot resist the money — or at least the possibility of preventing the billionaires from filling the campaign coffers of their opponents. When billionaires like Eli Broad pretend to be Democrats, it’s a very effective way of infiltrating the Democratic inner sanctum, long a champion of public education. (I say “pretend” after a Common Cause complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission revealed that Eli Broad and other billionaires had secretly funded opposition to Governor Brown’s tax proposition while publicly supporting it.)
Ideology only explains a small part of the opposition to Common Core.
If liberals oppose Common Core for any ideological reason, it’s probably less about an ideology than a distaste for lining the pockets of giant corporations. It’s more likely that the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Common Core isn’t ideological at all.
Many critics feel like the major purpose of Common Core is to make teaching measurable. Even if one is convinced that that goal is a reasonable one to cure what ails our schools — and many of us are not —
