Common Core: Yea & Nay (Encounter Broadside)

Why Conservatives Should Stop Opposing the Common Core (Common Core: Yea)
by Sol Stern

In the past few decades as progressives gained influence in universities and schools of education the idea of a coherent, content-rich curriculum has been erased from America’s classrooms. Now, for all its faults, the Common Core State Standards represent the best opportunity we have to restore that structure in our schools.

In this Broadside, Sol Stern shows how both sides of the education spectrum have misrepresented the Common Core. The left regards the standards as a threat to their ideological hegemony, while conservative pundits lack a true understanding of what they actually provide. Americans should see the Common Core as an opening to restore academic content to the nation’s schools and reverse the influence of educational progressivism in our classrooms.

Why the Common Core Is a Bad Idea (Common Core: Nay)
by Peter W. Wood

The latest effort to fix America’s schools has backfired. In 2007, an elite group of would-be reformers devised a brilliant political strategy to transform education without ever facing public scrutiny. Their bold strategy, which became the Common Core State Standards, was astonishingly successful for a while. Then the American public took notice.

In this Broadside, Peter W. Wood explains how the Common Core actually lowers standards while pretending to raise them and chokes off local control of our schools in favor of domination by the federal government and private groups. Bankrolled by the Gates Foundation, favored by political elites, and supported by true believers on both sides of the political spectrum, the Common Core once appeared unstoppable. But it can be stopped, and this book shows us how.