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What Hillary Clinton and Common Core Don’t Have in Common
In her most recent anti-Common Core tirade, The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann discusses Hillary Clinton’s position on Common Core, and claims that Common Core-aligned assessments are a big government power grab that was born out of an attempt to nationalize the education system. Pullmann erroneously asserts that states had no say in the matter and the government intentionally set out to deceive the population.
As usual, Pullmann’s arguments couldn’t be further from the truth. Her arguments about Hillary Clinton and the Common Core center around one premise – that Clinton’s past education work mirrors the Common Core:
Let’s compare the Clintons’ signature education laws—Goals 2000, School to Work, and workforce credentialing—and Common Core. They are breathtakingly similar in personnel, structure, and goals. They are essentially mirror images of each other, separated only by approximately 20 years. Among their commonalities are: Fusing education, labor, and health care policies; using big data to track and manage the citizenry; using education to accomplish national economic planning; combining national curriculum mandates with tests that enforce lawmakers’ will on teachers and schools; blending high school and college by lowering academic standards and turning the latter into voc-tech; and emphasizing sociopolitical behaviors and attitudes (such as sexuality, separating children and parents by needlessly teaching them differently, and socializing them to go along with the crowd) in the curriculum, not objectively measurable academic knowledge.
There is of course a major flaw in Pullmann’s rationale. Common Core doesn’t do any of those things. By attempting to conflate Clinton’s education policies with Common Core, Pullmann is deliberately and purposefully trying to spread misinformation about the standards.
About the Collaborative for Student Success
At our core, we believe leaders at all levels have a role to play in ensuring success for K-12 students. From ensuring schools and teachers are equipped with the best materials to spotlighting the innovative and bold ways federal recovery dollars are being used to drive needed changes, the Collaborative for Student Success aims to inform and amplify policies making a difference for students and families.
To recover from the most disruptive event in the history of American public schools, states and districts are leveraging unprecedented resources to make sure classrooms are safe for learning, providing students and teachers with the high-quality instructional materials they deserve, and are rethinking how best to measure learning so supports are targeted where they’re needed most.