The Common Core War

Changes to the American education system are happening so fast, across so many areas, most parents and educators are unable to fully digest them. New standardized curriculum based on unproven ideas, constant tests, and greater bureaucracy between students, teachers and parents are causing friction throughout the nation.

Fury from teachers and parents alike over the perceived idiocies and intense rigidity of Common Core have caused potential 2016 hopefuls like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to completely reverse their previous support for the standards. Core proponent and possible 2016 hopeful Ohio Gov. John Kasich blasted the reversals as purely motivated by politics in a January appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Then the political backlash began. Outraged teachers highlighted the loss of unique teaching styles and the complete destruction of creativity in the classroom.

Many of the figures behind the transformative period of the Core’s rise seem uncomfortably close to each other when one considers their outsized role in altering the educational experience of nearly all American children. Bill Gates has spent hundreds of millions to push the adoption of Common Core standards created by architect David Coleman. After designing Common Core, Coleman became the CEO of CollegeBoard where he has redesigned the SAT and AP programs and partnered with Salman Khan of Khan Academy to create online prep materials.

When Khan was named a top 100 most influential person by TIME in 2012, Bill Gates wrote his profile.  A year later Coleman was named to the list and his profile was written by none other than former Florida governor, 2016 hopeful, and Common Core apologist Jeb Bush.

These figures are all committed to a centralization of education policy and a uniformity of educational standards, tools, and curriculum.

Bill Gates

No one individual in American history has spent as much money to influence the course of public education as Microsoft founder Bill Gates.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $250 million driving the creation, implementation, and political defense of the controversial Common Core learning standards.

That massive sum includes a grant in March of this year to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long known as the political arm of the big-business establishment, for $3.7 million to bolster the political defense of the besieged policy.

Establishment Republicans like Speaker John Boehner and 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush rely heavily on the U.S. Chamber and its network of donors to raise millions of dollars to win elections.

With a quick coup of political support and big financial backing, Common Core enjoyed a meteoric rise. In 2010 the policy barnstormed the nation, going from implementation in 0 states to 41.  That same year Gates spent nearly $26 million promoting the program. The next year he ratcheted up his commitment, spending $82 million and winning over implementation in four more states: Maine, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington. In 2012 Gates spent another roughly $64 million to bring Common Core to its high water mark with the addition of Wyoming.

Then the political backlash began. Outraged teachers highlighted the loss of unique teaching styles and the complete destruction of creativity in the classroom. Parents lamented the deliberate attempt of the policy to deprive parents of any role in the educational development of their child. School administrators warned the barrage of standardized tests in Common Core were unproven to have any value and placed a huge burden on their school systems.

Gates’ spending to prop up the Core, as it has come to be known to ally and enemy alike, shows no signs of slowing down. The struggle for the minds of the nation’s children will continue.

Salman Khan

As with streaming movies and television, education seems to be headed to the Internet.  Khan Academy is a collection of video-based and interactive lessons, primarily on math, which is free to access and use for anyone with an Internet connection.  The platform has been slow to catch on in public schools, though the Khan website claims it has the participation of 500,000 teachers worldwide, but it has certainly caught fire with some charter school pioneers, with parents in the growing home-school community, and internationally as a nontraditional source of learning.

Khan Academy began as a YouTube Channel for Salman Khan to offer tutor videos for relatives and friends in math.  After the channel took off in popularity, Khan left his job as a hedge fund manager to dedicate himself to the growth of the idea.  As of June 2015 Khan Academy had 2,190,876 YouTube subscribers and had logged over 563,703,822 video views.

According to the Khan Academy, website users on the platform “have completed over 2.5 billion exercise problems” across roughly 4,800 available lessons.

Recently, Khan Academy has partnered with College Board to offer special online tutoring for the newly redesigned and controversial SAT.  The SAT redesign was based on new expectations from the Common Core curriculum.

In 2012 Time Magazine named Khan one of their Top 100 Most Influential People in the World and Bill Gates wrote Khan’s profile for the piece saying “Sal Khan is a true education pioneer. He started by posting a math lesson, but his impact on education might truly be incalculable.”

David Coleman

The policy wonk behind the major changes in the American educational system flies largely under the radar but has a disproportionate impact over every aspect of the American educational experience.  Often referred to as the architect of the Common Core Standards, Coleman created policy that now has reached into classrooms in 46 states.

Prior to the development of Common Core in 2009, Coleman partnered with Gates to lay the foundation for a new, nationwide set of standards and assessments by founding the Student Achievement Partners nonprofit. The work done by Student Achievement Partners was heavily cited and referenced during the drafting of Common Core and Coleman worked directly in the crafting of the standards.

Coleman had first achieved notoriety in the education community after founding and expanding an assessment consulting firm called the Grow Network which was eventually sold off to publishing giant McGraw-Hill.  McGraw-Hill and other publishers of textbooks and educational materials have reaped huge benefits from curriculum standardization under Common Core.

In 2012 Coleman became the CEO of College Board where he redesigned the iconic SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) Programs.  The redesign of the SAT closely mirrors the type of outcomes Coleman intended for high school students under Common Core.  The changes, meant to level the playing field for lower-income students and minorities, include the removal of penalties for wrong answers, making the essay portion optional, and eliminating what College Board has decided to be obscure English vocabulary.

College Board has drawn fire for its changes to Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum under Coleman’s command.  Fifty-five academic leaders signed a letter from the National Association of Scholars blasting new curriculum for the AP American History program that “shortchanges students by imposing on them an arid, fragmentary, and misleading account of American history.”

The letter goes on to lament the “downplaying essential subjects… notably the Constitution” and the focus of the new curriculum on the “vagaries of identity-group conflict.”  It should be alarming to hear fifty-five academics assert the new curriculum, produced by the same mind as Common Core, means in effect “no longer will students hear about America as a dynamic and exemplary nation.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has pioneered the path for Republican governors to walk-back their support of Common Core and then enlist grassroots enthusiasm to actively assault the standards.

Early on, Jindal enthusiastically supported the program and in 2012, with Jindal’s backing, Louisiana implemented Common Core. By 2014 Jindal had completely reversed his position on the standards, blasting them as Soviet-esque attempts by the federal government to impose a national curriculum.

Since his decision to renounce Common Core, Jindal has enthusiastically, though so far unsuccessfully, fought to remove the standards from Louisiana.  Jindal has brought suit against the Department of Education and his own state’s Board of Education to try to halt Common Core testing from being administered to students. Jindal also directed his administration to seek out alternative standards to replace those of the Core and pressed the Louisiana legislature to take action to halt Common Core assessments. While Jindal has been bucked by his state’s superintendent and legislature, who are so far sticking with Common Core, he has nevertheless successfully tacked his public position on the issue and won over grassroots support from opponents.

Since Jindal began his quest against Common Core, three states — Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina — led by their governors, successfully repealed their previous adoption of Common Core Standards.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

The best way to get states to do the bidding of Washington is the carrot and the stick. President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used both. By implementing the Race to the Top competition Duncan was able to bribe 46 states into adopting Common Core standards with incentive-based federal grants.  The program, which has shelled out nearly $4.5 billion, convinced cash strapped governors the invitation for greater federal regulation of their state’s education systems was their decision, thereby avoiding the aura of an encroaching federal government.

If longevity in the job is any measure the President seems pleased with the federal coup over education Duncan has led.  Duncan and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack are the only surviving members of President Obama’s original cabinet, both having served since 2009.

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