When the radicals start defending “standards,” that’s when you have to become suspicious—of the standards.
That is the case with Obama’s federalized education plan called Common Core.
Perhaps there is no clearer sign than when Mother Jones mocks alarms raised about Common Core’s national tests and student data tracking that will eliminate local control, and effectively, private and home schooling. When Linda Darling-Hammond, close pal of Bill Ayers, is in charge of developing tests, beware!
As I noted in my “Dissident Prof” post, the defenders of Common Core need to look at the reality, look at the money trail, look at how many radical professors are developing “Common-Core compliant” books and offering their Common Core consulting services. A prime example is Marc Aronson, author of a scurrilous book for middle-school students on J. Edgar Hoover and communism in America. Next week, he is a featured panelist at a Publishers Weekly Discussion Series, “Trade Books and the Common Core: Where Do They Meet?”
He is one of the many radical Common Core entrepreneurs that I wrote about in my Accuracy in Media report, "Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama's Federal School Curriculum." Aronson is part of Stanford University's "Reading Like a Historian Project," supposedly intended to make students more excited about history, but in reality intended to make them radically skeptical of our nation's history of exceptionalism. Stanford University, of course, is the academic home of Linda Darling-Hammond, one degree removed from Bill Ayers, who was a keynote speaker at a 2009 meeting about Common Core. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was another speaker at that meeting.
Stanford seems to be producing a lot of material for Common Core (which is also promoted by the PBS Education site), like Reading Like a Historian published by Teachers College Press, also publisher of many of Ayers' so-called "education" books. The catalogue description includes a promotional blurb by Darling-Hammond.
To see what "Teaching Like a Historian" is supposed to look like watch this video from The Teaching Channel. It’s sent out by the Department of Education.
See the rest of my post, “Common Core: Leftist Historians Profit” here.
And if you still believe that Common Core is a conservative initiative, read the Mother Jones article, “The Tea Party’s Next Bogeyman: Obama’s Common Core Conspiracy.”