The Common Core wins the war
A MESSAGE FOR 2016 GOP CONTENDERS: The Common Core has won the war, POLITICO’s Kimberly Hefling reports. As Education Secretary Arne Duncan prepares to step down, the standards that naysayers love to call “Obamacore” have become the reality on the ground for roughly 40 million students — or about four out of every five public school kids. In more than half of all states, millions of students took new standardized tests last spring based on the standards, and the expected uproar over these test scores hasn't materialized. The conspiracy theories about how Common Core would require monitoring kids via iris scans, force teachers to use porn to help students learn to read or ban teaching cursive have largely quieted. After years of hand-wringing, very few of the 45 states that fully adopted the standards have attempted a clean break — and those that did found it wasn’t easy to do.
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— Republican presidential candidates haven’t given up the fight. Donald Trump recently called the Common Core a “complete disaster,” and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz proclaimed they should be abolished — along with the Education Department. Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal all renounced the standards, while Jeb Bush has grown increasingly tepid.
— Yet as Common Core becomes more commonplace in public schools (and in many Catholic schools), some prominent Republicans concede they've lost their battle. Take former Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona. As governor, she signed an executive order banning the use of the words Common Core by state agencies, though the standards themselves were still firmly in place. She wrote in a recent column on the Fox News website [http://bit.ly/1Qz7jai] that implementation of the standards is “succeeding.” Kimberly has the full story for Pros: http://politico.pro/1LHnKU6.
— On a related note: Forty-four percent of parents surveyed in a new poll out today said standardized tests are fair and have had a positive impact on schools overall. And more than half of African American parents said either that too few tests are administered in schools or the number of tests given is just right. That’s all according to Education Post:http://bit.ly/1MmnRz5.
TODAY IS MONDAY, OCTOBER 12. Maggie Severns here. For the dedicated readers browsing this tipsheet during a well-earned Columbus Day break: Enjoy! Take an extra nap for me, please. You can also send me news and tips at mseverns@politico or @maggieseverns. Caitlin Emma will be back tomorrow: cemma@politico.com or @caitlinzemma. Send events to:educalendar@politicopro.com. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.
AN MBA FOR HILL STAFF: Working on Capitol Hill may be a dream job for ambitious recent graduates ready to start their ascent to the top, but the grind doesn’t leave much time for anything else. But a new, one-year University of Minnesota MBA program is designed specifically for congressional staffers. “It’s hard for them to do it,” said Steve Parente, associate dean of the university’s Carlson School of Management. During his years working with Hill staff on health
Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2015/10/the-common-core-wins-the-war-mba-program-comes-to-capitol-hill-un-sets-early-ed-goals-210662#ixzz3oMe129iZ