When the fracas over Common Core standards first came up, my inclination was to write it off as one more example of tea party-driven suspicion of the federal government.
I reasoned that these new and voluntary standards for k-12 education, regardless of their Republican roots, became poison once President Barack Obama endorsed them. This is how politics works these days.
But I was wrong. The rift within GOP ranks over Common Core isn’t something that can be solved with the departure, three years hence, of the current occupant of the White House. It runs far deeper than that, and if left unresolved, it could threaten the Republican reputation as the party of economic development — even in Georgia.
Big Business is part of the alleged cabal, you see. Bill Gates, even.
That was my take from a Thursday night discussion of Common Core in Sandy Springs, sponsored by the Fulton County Republican Party.
Advocates were represented by state Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, and Martha Reichrath, a deputy school superintendent brought into the state’s educational bureaucracy when Republicans first claimed the state Capitol in 2003.
Millar laid out the basic case for Common Core. In an increasingly global and mobile society, businesses want well-trained workers. And because we move around so much — in Georgia, the military is a major factor — businesses want some standardized assurance that a working knowledge of algebra (and other topics) means the same thing here as it does in Indiana or New York.
“We have kids going to college in this state, and somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of them require remedial education,” Millar said. “We’ve got a problem. And we’ve got to face that problem.”
His partner emphasized the Republican history of Common Core — specifically, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s efforts, starting in 2008, to create a voluntary, multistate agreement on what a successful high school graduate should know. The whole shebang was first unveiled at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee. One of the radicals who lent his name to the event: Edward B. Rust Jr., chairman and CEO of State Farm Insurance Cos.
Like Millar, Reichrath emphasized Gov. Nathan Deal’s recent efforts to allay GOP fears that Georgia has compromised its sovereignty and diminished its standards. “There was never a switch,” she said. “We never threw our standards away and replaced them [with] Common Core. We used Common Core to make them better.”
But the ears of the crowd belonged to the two onstage opponents of Common Core: state Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, and Jane Robbins of the American Principles Project — a conservative advocacy group.
Both pointed to the shadowy groups that helped Perdue create Common Core, such as the National Governors Association. Or those that have helped bankroll the effort — such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
“What do we get?” Robbins asked. “We get a radical new structure in which control rests not in the state of Georgia, but with private interests, with other states and with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington. We never voted for that.”
To be accurate, current educational standards have never received an up-or-down vote in the Legislature, either. But you take her point.
Ligon expounded. “Common Core is as much about government as it is about education,” he said.
“In essence, we changed our governance. And now the standards weren’t determined here in Georgia, but they were determined by consortiums of states, which means our voice was diluted, working with nonprofits, funded by large corporations that have an interest in this,” Ligon said. “Compliance of these standards would be under the enforcement of the U.S. Department of Education.”
So far, federal “enforcement” has consisted of making supplementary “Race to the Top” funding contingent on meeting Common Core standards.
It is Ligon’s complaint of corporate involvement in the Common Core movement that strikes the deeper chord because it may be the one thing that Republican proponents and opponents can truly agree on. American businesses do have a deep financial interest in whether Common Core succeeds — and whether U.S. high schools produce graduates who can read and count.
Men and women of business are the ones who see the borders disappearing — the ones that separate both states and countries.
Perhaps this is why Sonny Perdue recently came out to defend his legacy program. He needs to do it more often, but he most likely feels constrained by the U.S. Senate campaign of his cousin, David Perdue.
And it’s why Sonny Perdue’s successor is unlikely to retreat, though Deal has made some significant concessions. His smartest move so far: ordering up a review of Georgia’s social studies curriculum. That’s a hot-button issue among conservatives but has nothing whatsoever to do with Common Core standards.
Ever yell “Squirrel!” at your dog when he’s gnawing on the couch leg? It’s like that.
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