Why do Republicans hate Common Core educational standards?

I've seen a lot of animus against Common Core educational standards from conservatives on facebook, on their blogs and on their forums.



But I have yet to really get their problem with it. I see lots of talk about it being "indoctrination" and teaching "new math" and things like that.

Quote:

You don’t have the federal government controlling opinions and indoctrinating students and teachers with what they want the public to learn, and basically what they want the public to learn is that which is ‘common’ – which is why it’s called Common Core. I believe in exceptionalism and I think what Common Core does is it brings it all down to the lowest common denominator. It’s much like socialism. Socialism has been spreading poverty equally across the world and that’s not what we believe in. We believe in exceptionalism and that’s what our country should be advancing, not commonality.

http://ift.tt/1oAdNqv

See....it seems the Republican problem with Common Core is about uniform standards. Do Republicans really want students learning "exceptional" facts like wrong math, wrong history or wrong science? And how is having such uniform standards a hallmark of socialism?

Quote:

That last is important because what the current "gay fad" is intended to do is to break this passing along of received wisdom from our forbearers. The Left wants to make a "New Man" and to do that the chain of "contagion" of old ideas and beliefs must be broken. Children must be raised by the State or at least have the State be the primary influence over their intellectual and moral development. Common Core is one of the tools now being implemented to accomplish this, and that is being promoted in both the public schools (the original source for Leftist indoctrination) and the private ones as well.

http://ift.tt/1oAdNqB

Huh? Do Republicans think that Common Core is going to invent a new history?



Again, how are universal education standards part of "Leftist Indoctrination?"



Fox News even seems confused on this matter.

Quote:

In the legitimate category: Do the standards identify the right knowledge and skills for students to master in order to be college and career ready? And why can’t the Obama administration back off and let states manage their own affairs (as many of us have urged)? But some critiques are flat-out unfair. For example, the issue of “liberal indoctrination” has been raised in multiple corners. This is wrong on two counts. First, liberal indoctrination predates the Common Core; it’s been going on forever. And second, these particular standards (which, by the way, don’t prescribe textbooks, homework, or even curriculum) are neutral on just about every controversial political issue imaginable.

http://ift.tt/NK2Qrd

So Common Core is wrong because states should choose their own standards but isn't wrong itself because the curriculum is solid.



Huh, what? So it is good but because it comes from Obama it is wrong?

Quote:

While proponents of the Common Core claim that the new standards are focused on “college and career readiness,” more evidence is surfacing that a central purpose of the initiative is social justice and income redistribution indoctrination. Social justice indoctrination in Common Core is not just limited to language arts. Radical Math is a group founded by Jonathan Osler who teaches math and community organizing at a Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) high school in Brooklyn, New York. Its website states Radical Math is "a resource for educators interested in integrating issues of social and economic justice into their math classes and curriculum.”

http://ift.tt/1oAdPia

That is interesting. Of course it completely ignores three things 1) Teaching kids to apply math to social problems is actually a pretty good idea 2) Radical Math doesn't seem to be telling kids what their opinion on the various issues should be and 3) Radical Math doesn't seem to have anything to do with Common Core.



The last bit is the most important.

Quote:

Common Core is a curriculum to be very wary of based on the people who are putting it together, one of whom is Linda-Darling Hammond who was endorsed by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers for Secretary of Education and served as an advisor to the Obama campaign. What EXACTLY is Common Core? Essentially it is a standardized, all-out assault on learning: it is designed to further lower schools standards and is supported by the teachers' unions which have a self-serving interest in avoiding as much accountability as possible; the lower the standards, the less push back against the teachers, too many of whom are failing the young trapped in the government schools. The over arching ideology that shapes this agenda is far leftist ideology, that is much more intense and deliberately focused than that which tends to be a somewhat sporadic, less uniform at present. Okay. But can you give us some examples. The curriculum even includes teaching math in such a way, that non ideological Math experts who have looked at the proposed programs are telling us that "it marks the end of improvement in education." Moreover it devalues and de-emphasizes traditional literary works in favor of song lyrics and of course, government documents. I am willing to bet that these documents will be carefully cropped to make the left all-powerful and the only channel of the flow of such information, or should we say disinformation?

http://ift.tt/1aVG9JO

So, Common Core is wrong because of who endorses it, and it lowers standards even though I've seen zero evidence of this so far. Oh and it might make the Left look good, maybe.



And what is it that "math experts" are railing against here?



Are they talking about things like this: http://ift.tt/1oAdNqD



I mean what is wrong with teaching math that way?



That looks pretty darned useful to me. Is it now a political thing that math must be taught by rote? How did that happen? If teaching math in such a way as to confer a greater understanding of why the numbers work reaches more kids (I would have been among them as the old way of teaching math completely failed me) wouldn't that be a good thing?



Is the Republican resistance to teaching kids good math a part of their larger agenda to keep kids out of schools?



I mean in the end that's the only thing I can think of as driving all this. We already know Republicans hate education and teachers in particular (see what happened in Wisconsin as a good example of their hate) so is the assault on Common Core just another brick in the agenda of denying education to what they view as the gutter classes? I say, yes.



That is my take on all this.

via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/NK2T6b