How Establishment
Republicans Anchored States to Common Core, by Dr. Susan Berry, 1/2/17,
Breitbart. Establishment Republican politicians have boasted the Every
Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) prohibits the U.S. secretary of education from
coercing states into adopting the Common Core standards.
However,
many who have studied the law say not only is that claim unfounded, but also
that ESSA actually imposes Common Core on the entire country.
In December of 2015, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, touted that he and Democrat
Sen. Patty Murray (WA) had facilitated the “bipartisan” passage of the ESSA
measure that would replace the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
President Barack Obama signed the bill into law almost immediately, referring
to it as a “Christmas miracle.”
“We have
reversed the trend toward a national school board, repealed the federal Common
Core mandate, and enacted what the Wall
Street Journal called ‘the largest devolution of federal
control to states in a quarter century,” Alexander said.
A statement on Sen. Richard
Burr’s (R-NC) website following the signing of ESSA into law also said the
measure had succeeded at “repealing the common core mandate.”
“This is a
big deal,” Burr said about the new law. “It will bring an additional $24
million per year in funding to poorest children in North Carolina and put a
stop to the Common Core mandate.”
Republicans
based their pronouncements on the portion of ESSA that states, “The federal government
is prohibited from … Mandating, directing, controlling, coercing, or exercising
any direction or supervision over academic standards that states develop or
adopt, including Common Core State Standards.”
Parent
activists and education scholars who have studied the law, however, assert ESSA
neither repeals the Common Core mandate, nor prohibits the education secretary
from coercing states into adopting the standards. In fact, those who have been
battling against the Common Core in the states say ESSA actually does the
opposite: it keeps states anchored to the controversial education reform.
“Within
the other 1,060 pages of ESSA lurk the provisions that will keep states in
Common Core, or something that looks very much like Common Core,” American
Principles Project (APP) education fellow Jane Robbins and Indiana parent
activist Erin Tuttle wrote at The Pulse 2016.
“The Secretary won’t have to mandate anything, because the other parts of the
bill contain the requirements for … ‘high standards,’” a phrase that has come
to refer to Common Core.
For
example, while NCLB never dictated any state alignment for academic standards,
ESSA requires every state to submit its plan for standards for approval to the
U.S. Department of Education.
Robbins
and Tuttle assert: That plan must be “coordinated” with 11 federal statutes,
including the Soviet-style Workforce
Innovation and Opportunity Act passed a year ago; the Education Sciences Reform
Act, which
is all about collecting student data for research; the Child Care and Development
Block Grant Act, which adds to the Head Start requirements on preschool
standards; and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
Authorization Act, which governs the NAEP test that will almost
certainly be aligned to Common Core to hide the fact
that Common Core-trained students perform poorly on NAEP. Requiring state plans
and therefore state standards to coordinate with all these federal statutes
means, as a practical matter, states will keep Common Core.
“ESSA,
which replaces NCLB, does mandate alignment,” write Robbins and Tuttle, quoting
the ESSA law and translating the Common Core rhetoric:
“Each
State shall demonstrate that the challenging academic standards are aligned
with entrance requirements for credit-bearing coursework in the system of
public higher education in the State and relevant State career and technical
education standards.” This is simply another way of saying states must have
“college- and career-ready” standards. And as made clear by the U.S. Department
of Education’s own materials, “college- and
career-ready” means Common Core.
“High
standards” and “accountability” are also among the primary “buzzwords”
associated with Common Core. Upon her nomination to the position of U.S.
education secretary, Betsy DeVos immediately posted to a new website about Common Core: “Certainly. I am not a
supporter—period. I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local
control.”
Establishment
Republicans have learned not to use Common Core’s “toxic” name. As a result, many
state legislatures have simply “rebranded” or renamed the Common
Core standards with local flavor names. The standards themselves, however,
remain relatively unchanged, save for a few tweaks.
APP’s
education director Emmett McGroarty wrote at The Pulse 2016
following the approval of ESSA, “Anti-Common Core activists tried for months to
warn Congress that the new federal education bill … was a disaster that would
cement, not overturn, the odious progressive-education philosophies of the
Obama Administration.”
“Now comes
confirmation that the activists were dead on — and that Republican leadership,
including Sen. Lamar Alexander, Rep. John Kline, and House Speaker Paul Ryan,
carried out a cynical scheme to betray their constituents and give the
Administration everything it wanted,” McGroarty continued, citing a Politico
Pro interview with former Education
Secretary Arne Duncan:
Duncan
expressed joyful incredulity at how wonderful ESSA turned out to be from the
Administration’s point of view (meaning, how bad it is for children, families,
and the Constitution). “I’m stunned,” he said, “at how much better it ended up
than either [House or Senate] bill going into conference. I had a Democratic
congressman say to me that it’s a miracle — he’s literally never seen anything
like it.”
“[I]f you
look at the substance of what is there … embedded in the law are the values
that we’ve promoted and proposed forever,” Duncan continued. “The core of our
agenda from Day One, that’s all in there – early childhood, high standards [i.e., Common Core], not
turning a blind eye when things are bad. For the first time in our nation’s
history, that’s the letter of the law.”
Duncan’s
former Assistant Secretary Peter Cunningham likewise observed that Sen.
Alexander’s assertion that ESSA prohibits the education secretary from
mandating the Common Core standards in the states is “shamefully misleading.”
“The new
law that the senator from Tennessee is so proud of, the Every Student Succeeds
Act [ESSA], now mandates the very thing he rails against,” Cunningham wrote.
“Under the new law, every state must adopt ‘college- and career-ready’
standards. Thus, the new law all but guarantees that Common Core State
Standards—or a reasonable imitation under a different name—will likely remain
in place in most states.”
Neal
McCluskey, education director at Cato Institute, observed the vague language
of ESSA was a serious concern for those who want to return education policy to
the states, as provided in the Constitution.
“While the
spirit and rhetoric surrounding the ESSA is about breaking down federal
strictures … the statute includes language vague enough that it could allow
federal control by
education secretary veto,” he wrote.
As with
Obamacare, McGroarty says taking the time to understand exactly what’s in ESSA
should “end the pathetic charade that Congress just restored states’ autonomy
in education.” “And as for Alexander, Kline, and Ryan — they have simply
betrayed their constituents, especially the last few who actually believed any
integrity remained in the Republican establishment,” he concludes.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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