Video: My Six-minute WWL-TV Appearance Against Common Core
On Saturday, August 23, 2014, I participated in a six-minute WWL-TV Eyewitness Morning News segment on the controversy surrounding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Louisiana. The link to the segment can be found at the end of this post.
The segment was scheduled to precede the Tuesday’s pro-CCSS “forum.”
I was the only individual against CCSS out of three.
The other two participants want to keep CCSS in Louisiana. One is State Representative Walt Leger.
The other, Kenneth Campbell, is president of the national group financing the pro-CCSS lawsuit: the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO).
I wrote about BAEO in my book detailing individuals and organizations exploiting public education, A Chronicle of Echoes. You will want to read about this supposed “choice” group bankrolling Louisiana’s pro-CCSS lawsuit. In this July 2014 post, I offer readers the opportunity to read my chapter on BAEO for free.
As an enticement, let me offer a brief word on BAEO here:
BAEO was started via millions from white conservatives, including one foundation that years before paid to have a book written declaring blacks as genetically inferior.
National Alliance of Black School Educators President Andre Hornsby once described BAEO as “being used by conservatives to put a black face on a white movement.”
BAEO pushes “school choice”– charters, vouchers– and now, the “choice” to lock states into CCSS– in the name of “moving forward.”
Ironic, isn’t it– a purported “choice” organization for people of color spending millions derived from white conservatives to promote the single “choice” of CCSS?
But CCSS is not the first *deficient education solution* peddled by BAEO.
It was once wholly behind test-driven, punitive No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as The Solution.
Like CCSS, NCLB was also going to be the gap-closing wonder.
Between 2002 and 2004, BAEO accepted over one million dollars from the US Department of Education to sell NCLB to people of color as an educational solution via a multi-level media campaign (direct contact, radio, newspaper, internet).
By 2007, NCLB, with its “100 percent proficiency in English and math by 2014,” was already declared a failure.
So much for NCLB.
But BAEO has fresh millions and a new, gap-closing mission.
It’s 2014, and CCSS is going to do what is statistically impossible: make all states high ranking.
Thats right. Louisiana needs more rigor. Mortis.
Nevertheless…
…I have my fact-based doubts, which I expressed in short order on Saturday morning, August 23rd.
Like my writing? Read my newly-released ed “reform” whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education
NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE.
