Three years after the Department of
Education announced a contest called Race-to-the-Top for $4.35 billion
in stimulus funds, some parents, teachers, governors, and citizen and
public policy groups are coming to an awful realization about the likely
outcomes:
- A national curriculum called Common Core
- Regionalism, or the replacement of local governments by federally appointed bureaucrats
- A leveling of all schools to one, low national standard, and a redistribution of education funds among school districts
- An effective federal tracking of all students
- The loss of the option of avoiding the national curriculum and tests through private school and home school
Working behind the scenes, implementing these policies and writing
the standards are associates from President Obama’s community organizing
days. In de facto control of the education component is Linda
Darling-Hammond, a radical left-wing educator and close colleague of
William “Bill” Ayers, the former leader of the communist terrorist
Weather Underground who became a professor of education and friend of
Obama’s.
When these dangerous initiatives are implemented, there will be no
escaping bad schools and a radical curriculum by moving to a good
suburb, or by home schooling, or by enrolling your children in private
schools.
How was it that 48 governors entered Race-to-the-Top without knowing outcomes?
It was one of the many “crises” exploited by the Obama
administration. While the public was focused on a series of radical
moves coming in rapid-fire succession, like the health care bill and
proposed trials and imprisonment of 9/11 terrorists on domestic soil,
governors, worried about keeping school doors open, signed on. Many
politicians and pundits praised Obama on this singular issue, repeating
the official rhetoric about raising standards.
It stands to reason, though, that education policies would be
consistent with Obama’s agenda. After all, one of his most controversial
associations, highlighted during the 2008 presidential campaign, was
with an
education professor, Bill Ayers. As a terrorist, he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, had dedicated their
Prairie Fire Manifesto
to Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. It was
for this reason that Kennedy’s son, Christopher Kennedy, chairman of the
University of Illinois board of trustees, voted against bestowing
“professor emeritus” status on Ayers after he retired. “I intend to vote
against conferring the honorific title of our university whose body of
work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my
father, Robert F. Kennedy,” he said.
THE OBAMA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: WHERE DID BILL AYERS GO?
Back then, the former bomber and co-founder of the communist
terrorist Weather Underground organization was Distinguished Professor
of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The two had
worked together closely from the year Ayers hosted a political launch
party for Obama, in 1995, to 2002. At the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,
“the brainchild of Bill Ayers,” they funneled more that $100 million to
radical groups like ACORN and Gamaliel, which used the funds to promote
radical education.
[i] [1] This initiative was also
promoted by Arne Duncan [2],
now Secretary of Education. Also as board members of the Woods Fund,
Ayers and Obama channeled money to ACORN and the Midwest Academy.
[ii] [3]
When initial White House visitor logs were released in 2009, the
administration quickly dismissed speculations about visits by “William
Ayers.” That was a
different William Ayers [4]
Americans were told. The Obama administration is appealing an August 17
order to release the other visitor logs in response to a lawsuit filed
by Judicial Watch and others.
[iii] [5]
It appears, however, that “the” Obama-friendly Bill Ayers has been visiting Washington, D.C. for education-related matters.
In October 2009, the year before he retired, Ayers had an encounter
with the “Backyard Conservative” blogger at Reagan National Airport. At
that time, there was speculation about Ayers being the real author of
Obama’s autobiography,
Dreams from My Father. Ayers teased that
he was indeed the real author [6].
Blogger and law professor, Stephen Diamond,
noted [7] that no one asked why Ayers would even
be
in Washington, D.C. It turns out that Ayers was one of three keynote
speakers at a conference sponsored by the Renaissance Group, which,
according to Diamond [7],
was dedicated to problems of poverty, diversity, and
multiculturalism—and the inability of white teachers to deal with them.
The other two speakers were Secretary of Education Duncan and U.S. Under
Secretary of Education, Martha Kanter.
It is not clear what Ayers spoke about at this particular conference.
But my analysis of his courses and methods at the University of
Illinois determined that his purpose is to radicalize future
teachers—and by extension their students—for the purpose of sparking a
revolution and overthrowing capitalism.
It is shocking that Obama Education Department officials would appear
at a conference that also featured someone like Ayers. On the other
hand, their boss, President Obama, worked with Ayers in Chicago, and
this kind of collaboration is not entirely surprising. We are left,
however, wondering about the precise nature of the role that Ayers is
playing in the development of this federal education plan. But his
participation in this conference clearly suggests he is playing a role
of some kind.
At this three-day conference, Mr. Nevin Brown of Achieve, Inc., made a
presentation on the “Common Core State Standards” Initiative. A
recipient of the largesse of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Achieve would become a key player in revamping education under Common
Core. Hence, Ayers was a major speaker at a conference that was involved
in developing a new national curriculum. If Achieve has ever disavowed
Ayers or his teaching methods, we could find no evidence of this on the
public record.
The notion of a “Common Core” seems to recall E.D. Hirsch’s
traditionalist Common Knowledge curriculum, which emphasizes the need
for students to understand America’s cultural and national heritage. But
Common Core is not that at all. Many have been fooled, and an estimated
80% of the public [8] does not even know about Common Core.
Common Core is part of an effort to implement regionalism, the
replacement of local governments by regional boards of federally
appointed bureaucrats, who in turn are beholden to international bodies.
Regionalism will eliminate the freedom parents now have in choosing
neighborhoods with good schools because tax funds will be distributed
equally. There will be no escape in home schooling or private schools
either, because the curriculum will follow national tests. Students will
be tracked through mandatory state records that will then be accessible
to Washington bureaucrats. Ultimately, all students will be subject to
education mandates implemented by Obama’s radical cronies.
NOT LETTING A CRISIS GO TO WASTE
“Race to the Top” required that states commit to yet-to-be-written
Common Core standards in math and English/Language Arts (ELA). Today,
Common Core has the support of Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers, and was
included in the platform [9]
of the Democratic National Convention. It was embraced by former
Republican Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, much to the consternation of Tea
Party groups, who see this as an unconstitutional federal takeover of
education. The Republican Party is divided.
Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins, in
their white paper [10]
“Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for
America,” describe the pressure and sleight-of-hand that led governors
to sign onto a commitment that was then changed before the ink had fully
dried. They reveal that rather than being a state-led reform
initiative, as touted, the new standards were written by a few
well-connected, but non-qualified, education entrepreneurs. The history
goes back decades, but in the most recent phase, the vision for Common
Core was set in 2007, by the Washington-based contractor, Achieve, Inc.,
in a document entitled
Benchmarking for Success.
The question is: Why was Bill Ayers keynoting a conference attended
by the two highest officials in the Education Department and by Achieve,
essentially the project manager of the nationalized education
curriculum? It may be years before we know how often Ayers visited the
White House, but the Ayers educational brand or philosophy is all over
Common Core.
Some states are waking up. Virginia pulled out when Governor Bob
McDonnell was elected. Georgia, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina, and
others have begun the effort to extricate themselves.
When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said she would support a
state legislative effort to block Common Core, which her predecessor had
instituted, Education Secretary Arne Duncan
dismissed her concerns [11] about nationally imposed standards as “a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy.”
But it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to realize that Common Core
will ultimately dictate the curriculum. Two consortia of states (SBAC
and PARCC)
[iv] [12]
have been given $360 million in federal funds to create national Common
Core-aligned tests and “curriculum models.” Well-connected companies,
such as Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the multinational textbook
company Pearson, are in competition to design the test. David Coleman, a
chief architect of the Common Core standards for English/Language Arts,
recently was named
President of the College Board [13], which administers tests, including those designed by ETS, like the SAT.
The Education Department on August 12, 2012,
announced another competition [14]
for $400 million in Race-to-the-Top funds for local districts to
“personalize learning, close achievement gaps and take full advantage of
21
st century tools.” Such a competition cleverly bypasses recalcitrant states and lures individual districts into the federal web.
The feds’ announcement echoes Common Core’s emphasis on personalized
learning and leveling of achievement through technology and
collaboration (the “21
st century skills”). Common Core
emphasizes “in-depth” reading of short passages, rather than long
fictional or historical narratives. The Publisher’s Criteria reveal that
a focus on short texts will equalize outcomes. Text selection guide B
mandates that “all students (including those who are behind) have
extensive opportunities to encounter grade-level complex text” through
“supplementary opportunities.” The strategy of gathering students into
groups to collaborate on short passages ensures that no one advances
beyond others.
[v] [15]
In the tradition of John Dewey, multiple “perspectives” and “critical
thinking” are emphasized over the accumulation of “facts.” Common Core
advertises itself as promoting “skills,” rather than content. The
skills, though, do not promise to make students more knowledgeable about
literature or history, but to make them “critical thinkers” in the
tradition of the radical curriculum writers who are selectively critical
of the U.S. and the West.
BILL AYERS IN THE CLASSROOM
In 2008, attention was focused on Bill Ayers’ past as a terrorist;
this, Stephen Diamond maintains, missed the real damage, which was
political. Diamond, a social democrat, calls Ayers a “neo-Stalinist,” in
line with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, whose country Ayers visited to
make speeches about education being the “motor force of revolution.”
According to Diamond, Neo-Stalinism is an “authoritarian form of
politics which attempts to control and build social institutions to
impose state control of the economy, politics and culture on the general
population.” Ayers and his allies used the “critical policy area” of
education, and through four aims: “local school councils,” small
schools, social justice teaching, and payment of reparations
through education spending [16].
Local school councils and “small schools” are efforts to escape
modern schools that, in Ayers’ estimation, “are all about sorting and
punishing, grading and ranking and certifying” and demanding “obedience
and conformity.”
[vi] [17]
Ayers’ numerous, supposedly scholarly, books and articles are filled
with such hyperbole that depicts demands of the regular school day, like
objective tests and class periods, as evidence of a police state.
Former Senior Policy Advisor to the Department of Education and
member of the California Mathematics Framework Committee, Ze’ev Wurman,
testified that the Common Core overlooks basic skills, lowers college
readiness standards, and offers “verbose and imprecise guidance,”
[vii] [18]
while dictating that geometry be taught by an experimental method that
was tested on Soviet math prodigies in the 1950s—and failed.
In English classes, teachers will reduce the amount of time spent
teaching their subject of literature to only 50 percent, and then to 30
percent in high school, a move criticized by education reform professor
Sandra Stotsky. Replacing literature will be “informational texts” like
nonfiction books, computer manuals, IRS forms, and original documents,
like court decisions and the
Declaration of Independence. Documents, like the
Declaration, however, are taught in a manner that
downplays
their significance. Overall, students will be losing a sense of a
national and cultural heritage that is acquired through a systematic
reading of classical literature and study of history.
Although the official rhetoric promoting these standards is more muted, the approach
parallels Bill Ayers’ pedagogy [19].
The replacement of traditional mathematics with “conceptual categories”
lends itself to advancing a social justice agenda, as Ayers colleague
Eric Gutstein
does [20]
through his math education classes. The Common Core emphasis on having
students simply explore original texts parallels the John Dewey-inspired
approach that Ayers favors, of having students “discover” and
“construct” knowledge. Not wanting to be beholden to outside, objective
measurements of students’ knowledge, such teachers promote other more
subjective measures, like displays of “deep” understanding,
“higher-order” thinking, and ability to collaborate. By all indications,
the testing being developed now will use such criteria.
THE ROLE OF BILL AYERS “PAL” LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND
Stanley Kurtz, in his latest book,
Spreading the Wealth,
maintains that a nationalized curriculum is part of an effort to replace
local governments with regional boards, who would disburse local tax
dollars equally among school districts. Once all schools are the
same—with the same curriculum and the same funding—people will no longer
have the incentive to move to good suburbs. While Obama’s community
organizing mentor, Mike Kruglik, implements the regionalism advocated by
the Gamaliel Foundation through Building One America, Ayers’ close
associate, Linda Darling-Hammond, exercises “de facto control”
[viii] [21] through education.
Both Ayers and Darling-Hammond were leaders in the small schools
movement. She has published in a collection edited by Ayers. Both have
been advocates of ending funding disparities between urban and suburban
schools, ending standardized testing, and attacking “white privilege.”
She has been a board member of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic,
Social, and Emotional Learning), a group housed at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, that provides studies of, and services for,
Emotional Intelligence in schools—but really emotional manipulation
aimed at making students global citizens [22].
Both also failed to improve schools or test scores. Ayers’ Annenberg
Challenge failed miserably. The school created by Darling-Hammond,
Stanford New Schools, which targeted low-income Hispanic and black
students, had the distinction of making California’s list of the
lowest-achieving five percent [22].
Much of the reason may be her “five-dimensional grading rubric” of
personal responsibility, social responsibility, communication skills,
application of knowledge, and critical and creative thinking. Yet,
Darling-Hammond served as education director on Obama’s transition team.
In a January 2, 2009,
Huffington Post column, Ayers
argued for her nomination [23] as Education Secretary. That summer, Darling-Hammond pushed Common Core in the
Harvard Educational Review.
Darling-Hammond is in charge of content specifications at the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), which received $176 million of
federal Race-to-the-Top money to develop Common Core testing. She
appears frequently as a speaker and board member of other affiliated
organizations. For example, she sits on the Governing Board of the
Alliance for Excellent Education, Inc., recipient of a $500,000 Gates
grant “to advocate for high school reform at the federal level in order
to educate federal policy members about Common Core standards. . .”
In the August 2009
Harvard Educational Review, Darling-Hammond
gave a preview of new standards as she argued for “deep understanding”
and advancing beyond “the narrow views of the last eight years” by
“developing creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to
innovate.” New assessments would use “multiple measures of learning and
performance.” These would presumably emulate “high-achieving nations”
that emphasize “essay questions and open-ended responses as well as
research and scientific investigations, complex real-world problems, and
extensive use of technology.”
In an April 28, 2010,
Education Week article, “Developing an
Internationally Comparable Balanced Assessment System,” Darling-Hammond
claimed that the new assessment system is “designed to go beyond recall
of facts and show students’ abilities to evaluate evidence, problem
solve and understand context.” Bill Ayers, throughout his writings,
likens the testing for “facts” to a factory or prison system, and agrees
with Darling-Hammond’s emphasis on criteria like “student growth along
multiple dimensions.” Such buzzwords thinly disguise an agenda of
replacing the objective measurement of knowledge and skills with
teachers’ subjective appraisals of students’ attitudes and behavior.
Former testing foes, like Columbia Teachers College professor Lucy
Calkins, now advance Common Core standards. Although long an incubator
of anti-testing advocates, Columbia has produced the authors of the
popular
Pathways to the Common Core (2012), one of them Calkins.
Pathways is maddening in its lack of specificity.
Repeatedly, the authors inveigh against “skill-and-drill” and favor
“deep reading” and “higher-level thinking;” but they fail to say how
this will be done or even what it means. They discuss “read[ing] within
the four corners of the text” and having readers get “their mental arms
around a text,”
[ix] [24]
but offer no specific, much less tested, strategies for improving
reading comprehension. They contradict themselves when they cite studies
that show that students who read fiction improve reading levels and
then promote nonfiction. When examples of informational texts are given,
they are most often from left-leaning publications, often on trivial
subjects.
Common Core thus promises to
eliminate the idea of a common
core of knowledge—through the privileging of leftist “informational
texts” and material presented in a scattershot manner. The national and
cultural identity that is conveyed through a wide and interconnected
exposure to literary works from Mother Goose to Shakespeare will be
undermined.
While proponents tout a close, critical reading of short texts, or
excerpts, the truth is that the approach lends itself to infinite
interpretations wildly off the mark. The approach—where uninformed
groups of students speculate about “original documents”—is intended to
make them radically skeptical of any historical legacy.
Original documents are presented in such a manner as to actually
diminish them. For example, a sample exercise about Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address
threw teachers into confusion when they were instructed to refrain from
providing background and to read the speech without feeling. In this
way, this pivotal document is stripped of its historical significance
and eloquence. Nor are the religious references, so important to
Lincoln’s speeches, to be mentioned. The strategy puts the
Gettysburg Address on the same plane as other “informational texts,” say about frogs or snakes.
TRASHING THE UNITED STATES AND THE FBI
Other materials have the same effect. Stanford University’s “Reading Like a Historian” Project, promoted in a July 30
Education Week article,
offers teachers a ready-made lesson on the Cold War with four
documents: excerpts from Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech, the Truman
Doctrine Speech, a telegram sent by Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Novikov to
the Soviet leadership in 1946, and a modified letter by Henry Wallace,
shortly before he was asked to resign by President Truman. The “Guiding
Questions” focus on “close reading” and “context.” But with the scant
information offered, students will likely see the final question, “Who
was primarily responsible for the Cold War, the United States or the
Soviet Union?” as one of moral equivalence.
Another lesson on the Cold War is sold by Rutgers professor Marc Aronson, who
advertises himself [25] as a “Common Core consultant,” speaker, and author. He calls Common Core “a magnificent opportunity.”
[x] [26] His most recent book,
Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies,
is tailored for English teachers who need to teach “informational
texts” to middle and high school students. Aronson makes it easy for
them,
offering [27] them free teachers guides.
Master of Deceit mocks Hoover’s own bestselling
Masters of Deceit that
described and warned about communist subversion. Aronson’s book is
extremely manipulative and salacious, and engages in wild speculation.
While a conservative point of view is thrown in here and there, the
points come off as gratuitous and obviously contradictory to the main
(correct) message. Aronson presents FBI Director Hoover as a repressed
homosexual, who exploited Americans’ irrational fears about communism.
Among the “original documents” that Aronson provides are photographs—of
Hoover with his friend Clyde Tolson. He points out, for the benefit of
eleven-year-olds, that photos of Tolson reclining on a lawn chair, and
fully clothed, “might be seen as lovers’ portraits. . . but we cannot
say for sure.”
In fact, we can. As Bernie Reeves, founder of the Raleigh Spy
Conference, has noted, the story of Hoover’s alleged homosexuality was
contrived by the KGB in the 1960s.
He notes [28]
evidence that “…the Hoover rumor, fabricated by the KGB, found its way
into the lexicon of our culture where it has evolved from vicious
disinformation to accepted fact—a veritable success for the KGB and
another example of the role of the failure of established media to serve
as an honest broker in the affairs of the nation and the world.”
“Hoover provided the security Americans wanted,” writes Aronson. “Our
beliefs about what was acceptable—what could be shown in public and
what had to be guarded in private—shaped the secrets he could gather.”
Aronson’s parting words to the student are, “I hope
Master of Deceit shows
that we must always question both the heroes we favor and the enemies
we hate. We must remain open-minded, even when the shadow of fear
freezes our hearts.” In fact, our fear was real. Hoover led the FBI’s
efforts to expose the Communist Party members and fronts that were part
of the international communist movement that the editors of the
Black Book of Communism had estimated were responsible for about 100 million dead.
Others advertise their services as Common Core speakers and workshop
leaders, many through Edutopia, funded by movie producer George Lucas
that has been promoting
disturbing anti-bullying and emotional intelligence videos and workshops [22].
The publisher of
Pathways to the Common Core, Heinemann, also publishes ready-to-go
curricular material [29] and offers workshops on Common Core by Calkins and her colleagues.
SELLING OBAMA CORE MATERIALS
Publishers are promoting new Core-aligned materials. The American
Library Association directs educators to their Booklist, which offers
“classics”
suggestions [30] from
contemporary authors. More typical are
categories like [31] “Exploring Diversity.”
TeachingBooks.net offers lesson plans and discussion questions,
reportedly, to more than a quarter of all U.S. schools. The site also
features interviews and blog posts by authors about the research process
on favorite topics like the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.
[xi] [32]
Publishers Random House, Scholastic, and Holiday House are re-launching
their teacher and librarian sites with information about the Core.
[xii] [33]
PBS
promotes the use [34] of “public media” in the Common Core, thus
updating [35] their educational activities.
A July 18
Publishers Weekly article notes that publishers are eagerly putting out Common Core books by adapting adult nonfiction books, like
Fast Food Nation, for classroom use in a new title,
Chew on This. Indeed, they are following the lead of officials: One of the sample Common Core guides is for teaching
The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Lerner Publishing Group is publishing biographies on stars, “such as
Justin Bieber,” while carefully adhering to “Core criteria such as
reading level, narrative arc, and sentence structure.” Books are sold in
clusters, by topic, because “Typically, Core authors want students to
think more critically about what they’re reading . . . to compare
multiple sources in different formats; and to give more sourced
evidence, and less personal opinion in their writing.”
Presumably, preteens would not be writing opinion essays about how
“cute” Bieber is, but would rigorously be providing “sourced evidence”
in their “deep” analyses.
CLASSROOM LESSONS
How is Common Core now being used in classrooms? On March 14,
Education Week reported that tenth-graders in a suburb of Des Moines would be reading
Nickel and Dimed
by far-left activist Barbara Ehrenreich. This book, along with others
on “computer geeks, fast food, teenage marketing, chocolate-making, and
diamond-mining,” is about the “real-world topics” (like Bieber) promoted
by Common Core.
The Pearson Foundation, with a grant from the Gates Foundation,
will offer [36]
a “coherent and systemic approach to teaching the Common Core State
Standards.” Another big, well-connected publisher, Scholastic, is
developing “Everyday Literacy,” which according to
Education Week, is a “K-6 program that incorporates brochures, catalogs, menus, and other text types.”
New York City’s new “Core-Aligned Task” for eleventh- and
twelfth-graders centers on “doing work ‘On Behalf of Others.’” This idea
of speaking out on behalf of the oppressed is canonized as “a long and
dignified tradition of documentary work” that produces records “meant to
raise questions and to function as calls to action.”
Students are asked to “read” a
New York Times photo essay
and audio clip titled, “Joshua Febres: The Uncertain Gang Member.” This
exercise in “literacy” consists of “listen[ing] carefully” and
“look[ing] closely at the images that accompany the audio.”
The exercise, “Building reading comprehension,” involves “extracting
and analyzing relevant information from [Dorothea Lange’s
Depression-era] ‘Migrant Mother’ photos.” The teacher is to:
Place students in pairs or trios. Using all the photographs, have the
students spend at least ten minutes looking closely at the sequence of
images that led up to the final image, as well as that final image. Ask
them to infer what was selected and what was deflected from earlier
photos, when making the final photo.
After reading an informational
paragraph about James Agee
and writing a one-sentence summary of it, students “return to [the]
images.” As a class they then read a web page “which describes the
complicated history of that image.”
The class next watches a short video about the artist “JR,” who works
“on behalf of others,” by doing “massive public art installations all
over the world in which he posts photographs of regular people on places
such as the walls of buildings, rooftops, and the sides of bridges and
trains.”
The essay-writing task is a “micro-report” of 500 words “about an event you witnessed [sic] place or person you know that
needs to be brought to light or told about.”
Obviously, with only a “micro-report,” evaluation cannot be based on
written “literacy” alone. So the teacher is offered a handy “Speaking
and Listening Standards: Observation and Comment Form.” These
upper-classmen are judged on “participat[ing] in collaborative
discussion” that includes “work[ing] with peers to promote civil,
democratic discussions and fair decision-making.”
HIGHER STANDARDS?
Are these higher standards or dumbing down? Will Common Core produce
well-educated Americans or indoctrinated pacifist global citizens?
Huffington Post blogger and “Award-Winning Historian and Inner City Teacher” John Thompson
cheers this curriculum [37]. So does PBS, as it promotes its educational materials as
Common Core compliant [38], while receiving federal funds and the largesse of Bill Gates.
In her
Harvard Educational Review article, “President Obama
and Education: The Possibility for Dramatic Improvements in Teaching and
Learning,” published in the summer after Bill Ayers had urged her
nomination as Secretary of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond waxed on
about the Obama administration’s “opportunity to transform our nation’s
schools.” Some may remember Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform
America.” Darling-Hammond noted (or warned), “Barack Obama has outlined
a set of ambitious plans to transform American education on a scale not
seen since the days of the Great Society.”
APPENDIX: THE GATES FOUNDATION
McGroarty and Robbins note that the Gates Foundation “has poured tens
of millions of dollars into organizations that have an interest,
financial or otherwise, in the implementation of Common Core.”
[xiii] [39] While the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives to worthy causes like fighting malaria and HIV infection, the foundation’s
2010 IRS documents [40]
reveal funding of other, mostly leftist, causes. Gifts went to the
Tides Fund, and Planned Parenthood and other “reproductive health”
efforts. In education, Gates has given money to teachers unions, La Raza
schools, and a school named after Caesar Chavez.
They have given a lot to school districts. After Bill Gates met with the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reporter
Jaime Sarrio gushed about Gates’ generosity: a $20 million investment
in “game-based learning,” technical support in Georgia’s Race to the Top
application, a gift of $500,000 for teachers to meet the standards of
Common Core, and $10 million for Atlanta public schools’ “Effective
Teacher in Every Classroom”
program [41].
Florida schools received a substantial portion of education funding.
In 2010, the Gates Foundation gave millions to a number of developers
of “game-based learning” and “digital learning.” Gates is also helping
companies that will evaluate teacher effectiveness, like Teachscape.
Among Teachscape’s business partners are the testing company ETS and the
National Education Association. Teachscape’s founder is on the board of
Oracle, a company that advertises itself as teaching “21
st
century skills.” Oracle donated money to Teachscape. Another business
partner of Teachscape, Leaning Forward, will hold a conference in
December, sponsored by the Gates Foundation. Presenters will offer their
companies’ and their schools’ advice on using technology to implement
Common Core. Session topics fall into categories like “Brain-Based
Learning” and “Race, Class, Culture, and Learning Differences.”
Gates also gave millions to projects on “data collection” programs that track teacher and student progress.
The Gates Foundation supported efforts to market Common Core through
media “education.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received half
a million dollars to “identify and amplify ‘teacher voice’ to help
ensure teachers are in the center of the dialogue on teacher
accountability” (nothing for parent or citizen voice, though). NPR
received $250,000 “to support coverage of education issues.” The
Education Writers Association received $603,900 “to enhance media
coverage of high school and post-secondary education by offering
seminars and online training for reporters building bridges between
mainstream and ethnic community media,” and $23,634 to “support media
coverage of the education components of American Recovery and
Reconstruction Act.”
The Gates Foundation provided a $489,453 grant to the George
Soros/Obama mouthpiece, the Center for American Progress, “to help
communicate the importance of education reforms and support progressive
states seeking to implement them.” The same year CAP was also awarded
$302,680 to “enhance degree completion for low-income young adults
through the publishing of new policy papers, stakeholder engagement and
media outreach.” Over $1 million was given to the Editorial Projects in
Education, which publishes
Education Week, which is supported by other foundations favoring Common Core.
Education Week published
the Darling-Hammond article promoting new assessments. Stephen Diamond
in an October 9, 2008, blog post complained that
Education Week was “whitewashing” Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers in the Annenberg Challenge.
Universities across the country received grants to promote Common
Core, as did Boards of Regents. Columbia Teachers College, Ayers’ alma
mater, and place of employment for Lucy Calkins, was a major
beneficiary.
Gates’ efforts are aligned with the federal government’s, of making
reparations, as it were, by allocating money to low-income and minority
students and making them “college-ready.” Such allocations are quite
frequent in the tax return.
But critics worry that equalization will be achieved by lowering
standards. None of the education non-profits funded by Gates are
dedicated to raising standards through a rigorous, traditional
curriculum, or by promoting Western or American principles. As Heather
Crossin and Jane Robbins point out, realistically, the idea of universal
college-readiness can be met only by lowering standards. Some
Common Core advocates have admitted [42] that this is
the case.
[i] Stanley Kurtz, quoted in
The Corruption Chronicles: Obama’s Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government by Tom Fitton (New York; Simon and Schuster, 2012) page 124.
[ii] Kurtz, Stanley.
Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. New York; Sentinel, 2012. 138.
[iii] The Judicial Watch Verdict, August 2012, Volume 18, Issue 8. 10, 12.
[iv] SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium and Partnership for Assessment Readiness of College and Careers
[v] David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, “Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core Standards.” Revised 4/12/12.
[vi] Ayers, William. “A Simple Justice: Thinking about Teaching and Learning, Equity, and the Fight for Small Schools,” in
A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools, Ed. William Ayers, Michael Klonsky, and Gabrielle Lyon. New York: Teachers College Press, 2000. 1-8.
[x] Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2012.
[xi] Springen, Karen. “What Common Core Means for Publishers.”
Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2012.
