WASHINGTON, D.C. – The radical attack group Media Matters obviously didn’t get a copy of the White House Common Core talking points.
Defenders of the national education standards like to insist that the initiative was “state-led” and is therefore not a federal takeover of the public education system.
But in its attack on Fox News for airing a video clip about Common Core’s new way of doing math, Media Matters accidently spoke the truth: the standards are “an Obama administration education initiative.”
As if that weren’t already obvious. The Obama administration dangled millions of dollars under the noses of cash-hungry states a few years ago to entice them into adopting the standards, which weren’t even developed at the time.
The president and his staff clearly worked very hard to get this initiative off the ground.
Yet Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has become increasingly defensive over questions and criticisms of the new, untested standards.
In a June speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Duncan insisted that the federal government was not a leading force behind Common Core.
He has also pleaded with U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials to be “more supportive of the Common Core because it was coming under withering attack.”
“It seems that a big part of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s job now is giving impassioned defenses” of Common Core, a Washington Post story said.
If Duncan and the administration have no stake in Common Core, why would they so vigorously defend it? If it was simply a “state-led” initiative created and pushed by governors, why would Duncan’s dander be up?
In its zeal to defend anything related to the Obama administration, Media Matters slipped up and said what everybody already knows: Common Core is the administration’s baby. And that means we can all be worried about how much the feds plan to intrude in the operation of local school districts.