Common Core: Obama 2015 campaigns against Obama 2007

On October 24, 2015, the Obama administration condemned “over-testing” in schools. It called for a cap on testing, limiting it to two percent of a child’s class time.  It called on Congress to enact this cap and on teachers to “step back and make tests less onerous and more purposeful.”  This accompanied the release of a study by the Council of the Great City Schools.

In a smooth move, the Obama administration called on Congress to fix a problem that had been foisted on the people without the consent of Congress—namely the national Common Core standards, even as the widely hated name was scrupulously avoided.  The Obama administration also told teachers to fix tests that they had not devised and were forced to administer.

In an even smoother move, the New York Times summed up the blame this way:

The administration’s move seemed a reckoning on a two-decade push that began during the Bush administration and intensified under President Obama. Programs with aspirational names — No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top — were responding to swelling agreement among Democrats and Republicans that higher expectations and accountability could lift the performance of American students. . . . .”

Alas, the push began “during the Bush administration.”

It is true.  NCLB was a misapplication of “compassionate conservatism” through the federal government in hopes of ensuring that children (mostly in urban schools) would not be denied a basic education.  You see, while “urban schools” teachers were assigning group projects in “social justice” per the philosophy of Bill Ayers, students were left virtually illiterate and unable to do basic math.

Read more.

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