There are troubling signs that the effort to move forward with new college-and career-aligned standards for Wisconsin schools is going horribly off course. On Wednesday, Wisconsin State Assemblywoman Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) announced her resignation from the Select Committee on Common Core Standards, citing a deeply biased hearing process driven by extreme right wing ideologues.
I don’t necessarily agree with Assemblywoman Sinicki’s decision to withdraw from the Select Committee. But her critique of the process is valid and it signals that those in favor of a more rational process must speak up and take action.
Sinicki correctly points out that much of the Common Core opposition is coming from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and, with regard to Wisconsin, the John Birch Society. These individuals are certainly entitled to voice their opinions and to be included as witnesses at public hearings. But we should not allow our state legislators to let them hijack the process, especially since their arguments are almost entirely baseless and designed to incite fear rather than to inform public policy.
The claims made about Common Core by national Tea Party leaders are nothing short of ridiculous:
- Glenn Beck, who is famous for stunts like immersing a figurine of Barack Obama in urine and trying to auction it off on eBay, argues that the Common Core State Standards are the first step on the path toward a one-world government;
- Michelle Malkin, a Fox commentator and Tea Party favorite, claimed the standards are “about top-down control engineered through government-administered tests and left-wing textbook monopolies;”
- Veteran arch-conservative Phyllis Schlafly has asserted that “[Common Core] is a comprehensive plan to dumb down schoolchildren so they will be obedient servants of the government and probably to indoctrinate them to accept the leftwing view of America and its history.”
For its part, The John Birch Society has asserted, among other things, that:
- “Common Core’s subpar English Language Arts (ELA) standards are intended to remove the great British and American literary works of William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis from school curricula. These literary classics will be replaced with simple brochures, restaurant menus, technical manuals, and government pamphlets about the environment and sustainability from the Environmental Protection Agency. The purpose of literature will no longer be to expand children’s creative thinking and vocabulary skills but rather to make them practical components of a managed world economy and labor market.”
For those of you too young to remember, The John Birch Society, who entered the fray recently as a Common Core critic, cut its teeth on hoaxes. Back in the 1950’s, the John Birch Society claimed that the introduction of fluoride into our water system was an international Communist plot. Six decades later, U.S. children have a dramatically lower rate of cavities and other dental problems and the Soviet Union is a relatively distant memory.
Rep. Fred Clark (D-Baraboo), a member of the Wisconsin Assembly Education Committee, accurately summed up the opposition to the Common Core when he said: “This is nothing more than a Tea Party-backed witch hunt based on ideology but no real evidence.”
I happen to think that Common Core has the potential to do a lot of good for Wisconsin students, especially if we do it thoughtfully and collaboratively. And apparently, Tea Party-led Republicans fear that a fair and balanced debate will lead most voters to exactly the same conclusion. We need to put a stop to the propaganda campaign that the Select Committee is on now to railroad the education policymaking process and begin a substantive and serious discussion that focuses on the needs of Wisconsin students.
Jarett Fields is an education specialist with a passion for community engagement. For the past ten years, Jarett has worked to increase the number of college graduates by building sustainable programs at the higher education level. Professionally, he has worked to build pathways of success for students at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.