MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis is a “right-wing” extremist whose ultimate mission is to destroy “public education itself.”
That’s the takeaway from a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center which denounces the anti-Common Core movement as just the latest effort by the “far right” to discredit and dismantle public schools – the “linchpin not only of our prosperity but of the American ideal of equality for all.”
To review, Common Core is a set of experimental math and English learning standards that have been adopted by 44 states. Education leaders in those states – many of whom were appointed by governors, not elected by the voters – agreed to implement the nationalized standards after some serious arm-twisting by the federal government (via No Child Left Behind waivers and Race to the Top funding) and the deep-pocketed Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
But according to Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “scholars,” Common Core is the organic result of state leaders coming together to figure out once and for all, by golly, how to improve America’s underperforming public education system.
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