By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It can be difficult to decide what to think about Common Core. Most conservatives are adamantly opposed to this federal attempt to raise standards in our schools. So is Donald Trump, although it is hard not to get the impression that his position is merely the result of an adviser informing him that the opponents to Common Core are an important segment of the voting bloc he is attempting to put together.
I would wager serious money that, if some reporter asked Trump what it was that he disliked about Common Core, he would be able to do nothing more than repeat the line that it “takes away local control over education.” Any takers?
Not that it is not important to defend local control over education. My problem is that people like Jeb Bush and John Kasich insist that Common Core leaves the key decisions about education in the hands of state and local authorities. Should we believe them or those who insist that it is an attempt by liberals in Washington to impose their values upon our schools?
I recently came across a column by Phyllis Schlafly that provides a starting point for making an evaluation of the arguments from both supporters and detractors of Common Core. It traces the history of the program, from its origins in 1989 during the first year of the presidency by George H.W. Bush. Writes Schlafly, Bush wanted to be the “education president,” as part of his plan to present a “kinder, gentler” conservatism than Ronald Reagan’s.
To this end, Schlafly continues, “Bush summoned the 50 state governors to attend a two-day education summit in Charlottesville, Va…underwritten by major corporations such as IBM.” It was at this conference that “the basic idea that later became Common Core” was devised, a commitment to forming “national standards for what is taught, enforced by measures of ‘accountability’ to ensure that all schools toe the official line.”
After Bill Clinton ousted Bush from office, he used a “corporate-funded group known as the National Center on Education and the Economy, which included his wife Hillary as a board member, to rebrand George H.W. Bush’s proposal ‘Goals 2000’.”
George W. Bush took it from there when he became president, creating what he called “No Child Left Behind.” It used the same model that his father and Bill Clinton used, what Schlafly calls a “standards-and-assessment model of federal control.”
The name Common Core was coined when the National Governors Association sought to improve upon Bush’s No Child Left Behind by putting together “details of what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two or four-year college programs or to enter the workforce.”
These standards were adopted in short order by 46 states. The publishing industry jumped on board, turning out textbooks aligned with the new educational goals. Writes Schlafly, “The Common Core was promoted heavily by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, which received large gifts from charities controlled by Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, and Pearson PLC, the world’s largest textbook publisher. The Obama administration has been an active promoter of Common Core, providing billions of dollars in federal aid to states that agree to work with the federal standards required therein.”
The fate of Common Core is at stake in this year’s presidential election. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are defenders of the program. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio have taken a position in opposition, promising to abolish it if they are elected. In fact, all three have promised to abolish the Department of Education. Marco Rubio is no longer in the race, but he expressed succinctly the views of this year’s Republican candidates: “I don’t think you should have a Department of Education. There’s no federal role in local schools. We don’t need a national school board.”
On another topic, one raised in a letter from A.K., a reader from Westminster, Colo. A.K. contends I am naive for stating, as I did in a column about teaching Islam in our public schools, that it is appropriate to inform our students in social studies classes about the history and central beliefs of Islam, just as it would be to inform them about these elements in Judaism and Christianity. My position was that proselytizing and attempts at indoctrination should be unacceptable, but not a straightforward presentation of the facts about what these religions teach. Our students should learn what is meant by Sharia law, the Ten Commandments, the origins of Christmas, and so on.
A.K. insists that Muslims will not go along with such an approach in our schools, that their intention is not to inform, but to convert, nonbelievers. To support his case, he included a column by Robert Spencer from a 2008 issue of the newspaper Human Events, which describes “the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a popular, rapidly growing K-8 charter school with campuses in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine, Minn.” That academy, writes Spencer, “received $65,260 in state aid for the 2006-2007 school year.” The school’s website “boasts that it offers a ‘rigorous Arabic language program’; and an ‘environment that fosters your cultural values and heritage’.”
The academy was “cofounded by two imams” and was housed in the same building “as a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society” and “features a carpeted space for prayer, and serves halal food in the cafeteria. All students fast during Ramadan. They attend classes on the Koran after school.” Spencer asks his readers to imagine what the reaction would be if there were “a public school founded by two Christian ministers and housed in the same building as a church,” with requirements that “its students fast during Lent and attend Bible studies right after school”?
First Teachers is pleased to report that the authorities in Minnesota have closed Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy because of the religious indoctrination embedded in its curriculum and daily routines. A good sign to be sure. But that does not diminish A.K.’s observations about the goals of militant Islamists, especially their indifference to assimilating with the Western societies where they reside.
It should also be noted that there are proposals by Catholic pastors who are trying to save their parochial schools by turning them into charter schools with a curriculum and after-school religious instruction similar to what was offered at this Muslim charter school in Minnesota. Our criticism should not be on whether there are religious elements present in a charter school, but on the nature of those elements.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The email address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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