VIDEO: Hillary Clinton Supports Common Core
On April 14, 2015, I wrote a post about 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s support for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
I maintain that Clinton is a CCSS supporter, period.
CSPAN has a 4 1/2- minute video clip of Clinton addressing CCSS in response to a question from a student, Diane, at Kirkwood College in Monticello, Iowa, during Clinton’s 2016 campaign kickoff.
I tried to embed the video but ran into difficulties. Therefore, I videoed the video and posted to Youtube so that I might embed. Though the quality of the resulting Youtube video is affected by the double-videoing, Clinton’s words– and tone– and body language– make her support for CCSS quite clear.
Original link to CSPAN excerpt: http://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4534445
And here is the transcribed text of the video:
DIANE: I think we are very blessed to live where we do, where education starting very young through high school, community college…. We have all these opportunities, and we so are fortunate here. And I worry that not all of America gets to experience this treasure we have. And I think the Common Core is a wonderful step in the right direction of improving American education, and it’s painful to see that attacked. [Hillary (nodding): Right.] And I’m just wondering what you can do to bring that heart back to education in the United States, you know, where, what can, what can we do so that parents and communities and businesses believe in American education, and that teachers are respected, and our schools are respected, and our colleges are respected, and we offer a quality education to all Americans, you know, throughout the United States?
HILLARY CLINTON: Wow. That is a really powerful, touching comment that I embrace. You know, what I think about the really unfortunate argument that has been going on around Common Core, it’s very painful because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort. It was actually nonpartisan. It wasn’t politicized. It was to try to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, that there wouldn’t be two tiers of education. Everybody would be looking at what was to be learned and doing their best to try to achieve that.
Now, I think that part of the reason why Iowa may be more understanding of this is you’ve had the Iowa Core for four years. You’ve had a system plus the Iowa assessment test. I think I’m right saying that I took them when I was in elementary school, right? The Iowa, you know, tests. So that Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time, and you see the value of it. You understand why that helps you organize your whole education system. And a lot of states, unfortunately, haven’t had that. And so, don’t understand the value of a core in that sense, a common core. Then yes, of course, you can figure out the best way in your community to, uh, try to reach.
But your question is, really, a larger one: How do we end up at a point where we are so, ah, negative about the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation, which is how our kids are educated? There are a lot of explanations, and, there are a lot of explanations for that, I, I suppose, but whatever they are, we need to try to get back into a, Um, broad conversation where people will actually listen to each other again and try to come up with, uh, the solutions for problems because the problems here in Monticello are not the same problems you’ll find in the inner city of our biggest, you know, urban areas. That’s a given. We have to do things differently, but it should all be driven by the same commitment to try to make sure we do educate every child. That’s why, you know, I was a senator and voted for, you know, leave no child behind because I thought every child should matter, and shouldn’t be, “You are poor,” or, “You’ve got disabilities so we’re going to sweep you to the back. Don’t show up on test day because we don’t want to mess up our scores. No. Every child should have the same opportunity. And so, I think we’ve got to get back to basics, and we have to look to teachers to lead the way.
There you have it: Clinton’s words, tone, and body language.
For CCSS, and offering no apologies for No Child Left Behind, at that.
For more on Clinton’s Iowa visit, see this informative CNN take.
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