Talk About Stretching The Truth.

       An organization I'd never heard of before is bashing the "Common Core" educational approach being used by most states. It is a program initiated by the states and chief state educational officers. The federal government had no part in this endeavor. That didn't stop this organization, Citizens For Self Government, from trying to tie Common Core to the fed.
       See, the federal government has started to support the decisions of the various states to implement the Common Core improvements by providing grants to the states to help the states to institute these changes. The federal government still does not have any real part in the program.
       That hasn't stopped groups like this Citizens For Self Government and the Tea Party from trying to make it sound like the whole thing is a federal government ploy to take over our education. Although, certainly our educational system needs somebody to take it over and straighten it out. Which is exactly why the states got together to come up with Common Core. On Their own.
       Of course the Tea Party and CFSG and like organizations will tell you that our educational systems are best run by local elected officials, which of course, Common Core doesn't change except to require all schools in each state to teach the same subject matter. Currently, each state sets goals and minimums based on financial concerns rather than educational minimums.
       So under Common Core, for instance, one school district can't teach at one level and another school teach at a different level. In other words, one school can't graduate a student with no math while another requires math but not English. It also looks at international norms in math and science and endeavors to teach to those norms. Why? Because America is and will continue to compete internationally for jobs. If we hope to lure jobs to America, we've got to be better educated than our competition. There is no evidence that having individual school districts setting their own levels of student competency works to the betterment of the students. In some cases it hinders that effort.