The Common Core Scam

From The Federalist

Many people can see with their own eyes how intellectually thin is the brainfood schools serve children now, and research has shown a marked decline in the quality of U.S. K-12 curriculum. This is a big problem, because curriculum rivals teacher quality in its power to help children learn. One study found good curriculum could help children get more than two years’ of additional learning into K-12. This matters because people who haven’t learned anything cannot possibly be good Americans. That requires developing the capacity for self-government, which requires good judgment, which requires actually knowing something that can inform your decisions. Just look around. Does it seem like that characteristic thrives today? If you don’t think so, and you care about reversing America’s decline, then pay attention.

People who haven’t learned anything cannot possibly be good Americans.

While rants about bad curriculum surface regularly, almost nobody talks about why we are stuck inside a decades-long cycle of curriculum that a) feeds kids politically correct pablum, outrageous examples of which we see pouring over social media constantly and b) insiders can arrange through taxpayer-funded sweetheart deals that never benefit children.

The two, as it turns out, are related, both to each other and to Common Core. I’m about to argue that the second is the cause of the first. To better understand why, let’s hear from industry insiders who spoke to me (on the record) as I’ve researched Common Core over the past four years. In this installment, we’ll talk about the economic truth that monopolies degrade quality, and see how monopolistic and cartelized is the system that generates what U.S. kids study.

Read the whole thing.