The 2014 state budget is being held hostage by conspiracy theorists. THE CONSPIRACY theories about Common Core standards get wackier the deeper you dig. WHAT IS TRULY alarming about all this is that Kansas legislators consider themselves experts on education. They are dismissing work by real educators not because they know of a better route, but because, if truth be told, they don’t want to pay for the new curriculum.
You know the thinking. Don’t drink fluoridated water — it’s a communist plot to take over the world.
That, at least, is so far-fetched it gets a chuckle.
The current theory circulating the halls of the Kansas Capitol, however, has to do with education, and can do a lot more damage than rot your teeth.
Ultra-conservatives are against implementing a new curriculum for Kansas schools, popularly known as the Common Core.
“It’s the federal government imposing on our schools,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, chairman of the Ways and Means committee.
How so?
Well, a goal of the Common Core is to make math and reading standards more comprehensive. Instead of teaching to a test, the curriculum would take a broader approach to learning so students would better understand the meaning of the subjects and their context in the greater world.
Masterson, however, interprets that guidance as “Big Brother” telling teachers how to teach.
Well, no.
For the past several years educators from all over the country have devised a new curriculum they think will better educate our children.
To date, 45 states have adopted the measures, as has Kansas, but will be for naught if it doesn’t agree to fund it.
The measure to block the Common Core failed to make it out of committee in both the House and the Senate Education committees earlier this session. That it has somehow resurfaced at this critical juncture in budget negotiations should raise red flags as to its merits. Smells very fishy — like politics.
To wit: Parents are at risk of losing control of what their children are taught if the standards are adopted, according to the Concerned Women of America, an ultra-conservative lobbying group.
Last time we checked, parents send their children to public schools precisely because they lack the time and skills to be progressive educators.
The Concerned Women go on: “Policy-making guides, instructional materials, curricula and assessments will all be developed for us in states that have adopted the standards. Control moves further and further away from parents who have the primary responsibility for educating their children.”
Can you hear a collective sigh? That’s our teachers saying, “If only parents would be more involved with their children’s education.”
The Concerned Women of America website goes on to lament English classes may devolve to using such “anti-capitalist” books as Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed,” or photo essays from a newspaper, as a teaching module.
Now wait just a minute ….
First of all, Ehrenreich’s book about the working class poor probably is an affront to ultra-conservatives. It just happens to be a true story about how some industries don’t pay a living wage and the bind that puts people in. That the Concerned Women for America interprets that as socialism, is again another example of a conspiracy theory.
As for newspapers … well, that’s fair game.
So again, our children’s education — our state’s future — is being held hostage by legislators who don’t want to adequately fund needed programs.
At least that’s more palatable than all the mumbo-jumbo of the Common Core standards being the work of the devil.
Now, the fog clears.
— Susan Lynn
