Many of us have called for an end to Common Core (CC) from even before it had been implemented. Now that CC is well-established and the Utah State education system has backed it 100%, calls for the repeal of CC are met with resistance in the form of genuine concern about discarding a system that is fully integrated and running smoothly—with what would CC be replaced?
I believe that we should never abandon an entire organized system of education with everything in place, standards, curriculum, courses to replace it with something developed in haste by who knows who, and what particular agenda would be guiding the development of standards and curriculum? Also, was the replacement put together by parents, teachers and community leaders who are legitimate stakeholders in the education of their children or was it developed by education theorists and philosophers that have never taught anybody anything—with little input from the stakeholders, local people who are deeply invested in our children’s outcomes. It would be a major mistake for anyone having an excellent program in hand, to discard something of great value for a slick sales pitch and a handful of beans.
Unfortunately, this exact scenario played out by means of government coercion when Common Core (untried and untested hogwash theories with intent to indoctrinate/brainwash our children, turn them against their families’ values and culture and teach them to rely on the government for values, morality and how to think) was foisted on Utah by Governor Herbert who was blinded by all the federal dollars he was promised for Utah education.
Over the last several decades, states have increasingly relied on federal dollars to fund state programs, such as education and Medicaid. To our detriment, states receiving federal funding were instructed exactly how they should be educating children by the feds. Increasing regulatory burden and federal “guidelines” that accompany federal funds to states for education have led to a complete federal takeover of the states’ programs that gave us Common Core. Under CC, the federal government now runs our education in the United States, and the education bill to the states from the feds increases markedly every year.
Similarly, with the increasing entanglement of the federal government with state Medicaid programs (medical care is provided by the state for those who can’t afford to buy health insurance), the feds have insisted that Medicaid be expanded to cover many families who could afford and had bought their own health insurance. Where Medicaid expansion has occurred, many families that had purchased their own health insurance, but were now eligible for free Medicaid, closed out their policies and signed up for Medicaid. The original purpose of Medicaid, to help those without the means, was lost in Medicaid Expansion; the new purpose: to make the people more dependent on government and to make big government even bigger at taxpayer expense. Vote NO on Prop 3, Medicaid Expansion.
The federal government has been spending money it doesn’t have by borrowing what it needs to make up the difference between the revenue collected and the total they’ve spent each year. That difference, the borrowed money, is called “the deficit”. Our deficit now is somewhere around 23 trillion dollars. Currently, we’re paying the interest only each year on the borrowed money. At some point we’re going to have to pay on the principal and interest; it’s likely that our generation, the one that spent the borrowed money, will stick our children, our grand-children and likely also our great-grand-children with paying off our debt.
This is not the legacy most of us had hoped to leave for our posterity. If we had any integrity, we would cut government spending, stop borrowing and spending money we don’t have and pay back that which is owed as rapidly as possible. To accomplish this, we need to stop the current bleeding that goes on every year where the feds pony-up millions of dollars for the states to keep Common Core watered and fed.
The feds should also cease to provide the states with funding for Medicaid Expansion. And Governor Herbert should cease to beg for federal funding for every program he wants to run. The only way to reduce the deficit without killing the economy (counter-productive; as earnings and incomes shrink, so does revenue) is to dramatically reduce spending, all the pork and money to the states must stop. All dependency on federal dollars must be discouraged.
Most of the federal money promised the states for adopting Common Core never found its way to Utah and the increased expense of doing CC (including that of paying third-party NGOs who developed the proprietary CC system and remain intimately involved in computer testing and data-mining our children) has placed an additional burden on Utah taxpayers. Despite taxpayers having funded a number of tax increases to cover the additional costs of CC, additional revenue is being sought now in the name of educating our children.
However, if the tax increase is approved, little of the revenue will actually go to the schools and virtually none of it will go toward teacher’s salaries. Instead, the majority of the revenue will be diverted to other purposes, such as mass transit. Don’t waste your money on government, hoping it will get to the children; it never does. Give it directly to your children! Vote NO on the Nonbinding Opinion Question #1. Say No to increasing the gas tax to create a bigger government slush fund.
Utah’s K-12 educational system had been a top-rated system that many dedicated educators, local government officials and workers, parents and volunteers had worked diligently on, putting together and refining the details over many years. Utah’s standards, curriculum and coursework designs served as a model system that a number of other states borrowed to pattern their systems after ours. The Utah education system could be restored to us within hours of discarding Common Core.
Common Core had not been vetted by any of the major stakeholders involved in the education of our children, like parents, teachers and local communities that stand in the best interests of the children. Utah’s system was summarily discarded and Bill Gates’ space age digitized protocols were put in motion. Bill’s grand experiment is using our children as his own personal guinea pigs. Our children are treated under Common Core as objects to be acted upon with cold indifference by the power and control elite who have supported Common Core from the start. These supporters include many leaders of industry who are interested in assuring an adequate workforce will exist in the near future to sustain their companies.
Common Core was developed and implemented primarily to mass-produce efficient little robototron workers fated by design to have their implanted silicon chips cease functioning immediately after the warranty expires. Children that are the victims of this Common Core travesty remain of necessity in the workforce until they’re completely worn down and ground into dust (or perhaps sausage) on the assembly lines of tomorrow.
Common Core must be jettisoned immediately, not just because our children are no longer being educated (everything is being “dumbed down” to the lowest common denominator), but because they’re being harmed by the soulless and heartless methods and the progressive content and agenda of the state. It’s so much more important to the state to create generation after generation of compliant and submissive mechanical subjects that will easily bend to the state’s authoritarian will. It’s of much greater interest to the state to “train” today’s children to be tomorrow’s workforce than it is for the state to be involved in providing anyone a genuine “classical education.”
Any deviation from the state prescribed highways of vocational training onto the twisted pathways of a classical education is likely to elicit such distasteful occurrences as school children having original, independent thoughts, thinking innovatively, outside the box, or being able to critically think about and assess the merits of (for example) what they’re being taught (or not taught) in school.
As far as education, the state’s Common Core is much more interested in regimenting political correctness (based not on equal opportunity, but on equal outcomes). Since the state values collective mediocrity and abhors individual excellence, absolute “educational equality” must be enforced—after all, it wouldn’t be fair, in terms of “educational justice,” to have little Jimmie be very bright and get all “A”s on his report card while his less gifted classmate Sally takes home a report card with all “C”s.
I thought Common Core would be dismantled soon after Obama had completed his second term. President Trump has spoken of scuttling Common Core, but as far as I can tell, little has been done in this regard. The Constitution provides certain limited and specific powers and responsibilities to be the domain of the federal government. Other than those powers listed for the feds, all other powers and responsibilities are the prerogatives of the states and the people.
The federal powers have never legitimately included education or healthcare. The fact that the feds are indeed running national education and healthcare programs informs us that the federal government has overreached for years its Constitutional limits. These illicit powers the federal government has usurped from the states and the people must be stripped from the feds and placed in the hands of local authorities.
It is getting harder each day to stand by, waiting what seems like forever for CC to be put down. Maybe we need to light a fire under our Governor and Legislature, start impeachment procedures against our state officials, or perhaps start an initiative to go on the next ballot to dump CC. What more can we do to make CC disappear?
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