Sunday, March 9, 2014

Rotten to the Core: Stop federal dictates on Georgia education | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Rotten to the Core: Stop federal dictates on Georgia education | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:



Rotten to the Core: Stop federal dictates on Georgia education 


    Tanya Ditty is state director of Concerned Women for America of Georgia. Jane Robbins is a senior fellow with the American Principles in Action. Together, they call for passage of Senate Bill 167,  now under review in the House Education Commitee and due for a vote there Wednesday:
    By Tanya Ditty and Jane Robbins
    With the Senate passage of SB 167, Georgia scored a victory against CommonCore for parents and students. This is the strongest anti-national standards legislation to make it out of a legislative chamber in the nation. It is fitting that since Georgia claims credit for moving the nation into this mess, Georgia should take responsibility to lead us out.
    The essential problem with CommonCore is that it embraces and exacerbates everything that has damaged public education over the last 40 to 50 years. Why should we believe that doing more of what failed in the past will succeed in the future?
    First, CommonCore increases the centralization and loss of local control that have damaged education. It places control over the standards into the hands of not just distant, unresponsive governments, but of unaccountable private interests in Washington.
    One of these private interests is the Gates Foundation, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting CommonCore. Much of that went to the CommonCore owners, the National


    Get Schooled: Have critics read Common Core State Standards?
    A lot of folks responded to an AJC op-ed piece by Tanya Ditty and Jane Robbins criticizing Common Core State Standards. A frequent comment was the two critics mischaracterized what Common Core says, especially in contending it mandates students spend half their time on “informational texts,” forcing students ...