In Support of Public Education: Examining Privatization, Common Core and High Stakes Testing
A special thanks to Becky Smith (Opt Out Orlando and SOS) who crafted a large portion of this document, which was shared with and edited by United Opt Out to share here
Our opposition to the Common Core and high stakes testing-HST (which go hand in hand) is not grounded in or allied with any particular political ideology.
Although some groups are against the same issues they do not share the same core beliefs regarding the cause of these reforms, or the solutions. United Opt Out would like to clarify our stance.
Although some groups are against the same issues they do not share the same core beliefs regarding the cause of these reforms, or the solutions. United Opt Out would like to clarify our stance.
Our work is driven by the facts as we see them. First, Common Core is not a “leftist conspiracy.” The facts do not support this assumption. While we concede that many prominent “liberals” and “progressives” (such as Arne, some Union leaders, and Gates who proclaim themselves to be) have sold public education up the river with a false narrative of “equity” or “civil rights” as justification for reform, it is also true that the origins of the Common Core and HST concurrently emerged from conservative-dominated business and corporate leadership with membership in ALEC . We need to call on the carpet ALL perpetrators of destructive reform, not just those whose political ideology differs from our own.
This leads to the second point. We agree that Common Core and HST are harmful intrusions into public education foisted upon us from the federal government via Race to the Top. Data mining and “big brother” oversight of classrooms and children must end. But the story does not end here. Big government is in partnership with big business (through private-public partnerships), and the template which created Common Core and HST mandates emanate from a privatization model for education. In this corporate model, Common Core is used as a “one size fits all” framework of education which yields private business profits at the expense of quality learning. It was crafted by corporate think tanks and entities with leadership from individuals in the CORPORATE world, such as (but not limited to) Lou Gerstner (IBM and Achieve), David Coleman (Student Achievement Partners and College Board) and Sir Michael Barber (Minster of Education to Tony Blair and CEO of Pearson). They see public education as a profitable venture to be tapped by private interests. The US Dept. of Education got its playbook from the corporate world (see the list of whose who at thispolicy meeting in 2008).
The idea for national standards emerged from and are endorsed by corporate-business sectors like theIn Support of Public Education: Examining Privatization, Common Core and High Stakes Testing - UNITED OPT OUT: The Movement to End Corporate Education Reform:
Undocumented migrants pass a boy between two cars on a moving northbound freight train known as “The Beast,” because of rampant accidents and violent crime, as it passes through Tenosique, Mexico, July 2, 2014. (Photo: Meridith Kohut / The New York Times)
