Common Core Has Disappeared from Trump's Remarks
What happened to Common Core—that is, abolishing it? President Trump's promise to get rid of the controversial program of standards for elementary and secondary schools is gone from his speeches.
He didn't mention it Tuesday night in his hour-long speech to a joint session of Congress. He didn't repeat his promise to end it in his inaugural address a month ago. And he neglected to cite it in his rousing talk at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week.
In Trump's campaign, however, the anti-Common Core message was a staple in his speeches at rallies. He emphasized it regularly in interviews and criticized his Republican primary opponents, particularly Jeb Bush, for supporting it. His promise to get rid of it drew loud cheers.
His position was that Common Core took control of education from local communities. It set standards for what students should learn in "English language arts" and mathematics at the end of each grade, K-thru-12.
It was created by education specialists, school officials, and governors, and was imposed on school systems across after little discussion in public. In some states, its adoption was a surprise. Common Core was sold as a pathway to success in college and careers.
Trump joined opponents of Common Core who saw it as a raid on states' rights and local control of schools and as the epitome of the top-down approach to education reform. "I am totally against Common Core," he said at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention two years ago.
"Thumbs down for Common Core," he said in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in January 2016. "We're gonna bring education back to the states and back to the people and the parents." In Cleveland in September, Trump said, "We spend more by far [on schools] and we're doing very poorly. So obviously Common Core doesn't work."
Trump's omission of Common Core from his speeches has raised the question of whether abolishing it remains part of his agenda. Nor is it clear how Education Secretary Betsy Devos intends to handle the issue.Common Core Has Disappeared from Trump's Remarks | The Weekly Standard:
