By Larry Grau, DFER Indiana State Director
Throughout the debate on Common Core State Standards (CCSS) this year, we’ve engaged in advocacy for the policies related to CCSS as part of a broad bipartisan coalition. At the same time opponents of the standards from both sides of the aisle have been debating those same CCSS policies, but with a few key elements missing from their side of the conversation—the facts.
(Read these articles for an overview of where DFER stands on Common Core: StateImpact, Courier Press, WIBC, DFER)
To paraphrase the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), critics are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Over the past week, we have released a series of messages highlighting the positions of several opponents of Common Core who hail from the extreme right-wing of the political spectrum; it is a group with a history of spreading misinformation and/or basing their positions wholly on ideology, rather than concrete evidence. Such extremists have steered so far from the facts, that they have been experiencing a barrage of criticism by moderate Republican members of their own party since the 2012 elections. (For context, these right-wing extremists were blamed for pushing policies that put the GOP out of step with mainstream voters. GOP pollster and messaging guru, Frank Luntz, was caught on tape making similar points just last week.)
In our series, it was not our intention to try to be cute or highlight right-wing opposition to Common Core simply to pick on some of the more extreme people in the Republican Party. Our point was to send a message to Democratic legislators in Indiana and others across the nation: If someone wants to align themselves with those in opposition to Common Core, they should understand what types of people they’re aligning themselves with.
In addition, we did not mean to imply that anyone who criticized Common Core is a right-wing extremist. What we sought to do was to point out that some of the most vocal criticism was coming from sources with questionable credibility and with a political agenda at odds with that of most Democrats.
There was also a real sense of urgency to voice these concerns by putting this message in the hands of legislators and the public. The Indiana General Assembly was on the verge of enacting legislation to withdraw the state from the Common Core, and every vote counted when the bill was considered Friday, the final day of our legislative session. The last thing we wanted to see was Democrats siding with a nervous group of Indiana Republican legislators caving into a narrow contingency of extremists dead set on Indiana becoming the first—and likely the only—state to withdraw from the Common Core.