Advocates looking to stop common core in North Dakota recently invited Dr. Duke Pesta, a homeschooling advocate, to the state to talk about the issue. Update: Superintendent Baesler called me this evening to say that her office has not sent out anything critical of Pesta from DPI and that her department deals with facts and…
Steve Cates: A Timeline For Common Core
Did the Common Core Standards appear magically out of thin air? Unlikely. “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow…
Steve Cates: The Core Of Common Core
The American political left has always wanted more and more control of education through the centralization of power to the Federal Government. In the early 1990s they tried to push Outcome Based Education on the nation but people figured out what the real deal was and it was rejected. But the leftist/socialist/progressives just keep on…
Steve Cates Column: Chamber Of Commerce Meeting On Common Core Disappoints
The meeting held in Bismarck on the evening of March 27th was claimed by the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) to be to discuss the “facts and fallacies of Common Core” according to their meeting announcement. How accurate is this claim? In town halls, school board meetings, and a majority of open informational meetings the public…
Study: Common Core Has Little Impact On Education Progress
Common Core may well represent one of the most controversial education policies implemented in America in a generation, but a new study from the Brookings Institute indicates that the policy may be having little impact on academic outcomes. You can read the full report from the Brookings Institute here. The authors grouped states by their…
It's Time To Set Aside Conspiracy Theories And Get Serious In The Common Core Debate
If I had to name one criticism I got consistently from readers this year (aside from the hate mail I get simply for being a conservative) is that I haven’t spent enough time focusing on the Common Core education standards. And that’s fair. I haven’t written much about Common Core, mostly because I haven’t been…