For the second time in a week, an article has been published about Common Core that seems to have been written three years ago and never updated. Last week brought the paean to Common Core from non-educator Douglas Holtz-Eakin, repeating talking points that have long since been debunked. Now we have an article from the leader of a group called Military Families for High Standards (MFHS) arguing that the discredited national standards are just what the military needs to produce great recruits and help mobile families.
MFHS’s chairwoman, Christi Ham, presents disturbing statistics about the increasing lack of qualifications of many applicants for military service. But then she pivots to the non sequitur that Common Core is the answer. Offering no reasons for this conclusion, she merely asserts that the national standards are “more rigorous.” (The only reports on the MFHS website are one funded by the New Venture Fund, which received over $4 million from Common Core financier Gates Foundation in 2015 alone, and a brief fact sheet from the far-left Center for American Progress, which also sups at the Gates trough.)
Without rehashing all the scholarly evidence of the manifold deficiencies of Common Core, and without repeating that National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores get worse the longer Common Core is continued, we can simply say the continued defense of the obviously indefensible borders on delusional.
Shouldn’t Common Core proponents at least acknowledge the constant drip of bad news for their pet project? Shouldn’t they at least mention that the trajectory isn’t headed in the right direction, if only to try to explain it away? Perhaps they’re busy getting their stories straight, and in the meantime are relying on recycled articles from La-La Land. Very odd.
Jane Robbins is an attorney and a senior fellow with the American Principles Project.
