Double Take! Opposition to Common Core Stimulates Strange Alliances

I was employed in the scoring division. I can assure you that their primary interest is in making a profit for their investors. As you might expect, the management is stocked with personnel from the educational establishment, many of whom have a very liberal viewpoint. Pearson aims to please its customers. Its customers are state boards of education, bureaucracies, not parents, students or teachers.

The aforementioned conspiracy teacher fears a private corporate takeover of education and advocates for the preservation of public control. He or she longs for the good old days when teachers were not measured for any objective standard of success. News flash: we’ve had a federal government controlled education system since the Department of Education was founded in the 1970s and like all socialist systems, it has failed miserably.

Thus, we have the pressure for accountability through assessments. We are currently burdened with a government system controlled by unions and corporate cronies. State boards are appointed by politicians who are funded by unions and corporations. Teacher unions take money from teachers, who then give it overwhelmingly to Democrats who then legislate for more teachers, higher teacher pay and benefits and larger education bureaucracies. In return, the bureaucrats make sure that the schools educate the next generation of Democrat voters. Thus, kids graduate knowing how to put on a condom, and that the earth is on fire and that Republicans and capitalism are evil. But, they cannot read a set of instructions.

So, what’s the solution? As I have penned before, the best solution would be a private system where schools would be accountable to consumers, namely, parents. I agree with the conspiracy teacher that a private system controlled by Pearson or any other corporation would be a nightmare.

But, privatization does not mean corporate control. Under such a system, funding (taxes) would be restored to the consumer. Competition would lead to quality and success. Companies that create textbooks, curriculum, and assessments and score assessments would be accountable to parents instead of politicized bureaucrats. Good teachers that love to teach would actually be paid better and deadbeats would be canned. Kids would grow up to be productive citizens rather than liberal Democrats.

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