The great philosopher Elvis Presley once said …
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”
The King would probably see lots of suspicious lies in this education madness … and be all shook up over the lack of truth.
Okay! … no more campy mentions of anything Elvis. But I’m still gonna bring some sunshine.
So here’s the question of the day … and a shot of truth.
Is Common Core racist? Damn straight it is.
From the jump this reform missed the mark. It was supposed to cure failing schools … save kids trapped in messy situations … and then set a new direction for public education.
Instead … it screwed the pooch.
It became the most expensive … and most disrupting … educational debacle in American history. And there’s still more pain yet to come.
Lots insist that poverty is an excuse for the poor performance of minorities in public schools. Others see it as the single greatest hurdle in providing youngsters with the education they need for a life well-lived.
It’s a discussion that found no solution in this reform … and here’s why.
The Common Core reformers … from the start … were hesitant and spineless. Supposedly daring reformers dared not look at this issue of school performance through the lenses of race and economics.
Yet that is precisely how we’ve looked at everything for a long, long time.
So the politically-correct reform crowd looked past the truth … snapped on their blinders … and let the mess live on.
That’s not a reform … that’s a hustle. Taxpayers got fleeced for billions … and disadvantaged kids got screwed over. Again.
Quite obviously, most … not all … failing schools are found in inner city circumstances … and they are almost always overwhelmingly schools of color. And they’re poor.
Yet, the Common Core weasels didn’t dare suggest that there be different remedies for those failing schools … and different adjustments for other schools.
That would mean taking a very hard look at why minority schools are such miserable failures … and no one wants to disturb that hornet’s nest.
Hell no! That would require speaking some hard truths … and disturbing the status quo. And letting some sun in.
The race card would surely show up … because it almost always does. And that would require even more hard truth … which would bring more discomfort … which would reveal more ugly realities. Lots more. And who needs more of that sort of truth?
So, less became more.
They wimped-out. Big time. Because the great reform didn’t include any great courage.
Reforms would apply across the board. And it didn’t much matter if a school was wildly successful or a perennial failure. Everyone was gonna sip the same reform medicine … even if it destroyed good schools … and made bad ones worse.
Know what that’s called?
Benign neglect. It’s pretend.
And that’s all Common Core did … pretend.
The ugly beauty of Common Core is that it screwed everyone. With ugly equality.
And so the idiots were free to reform this and that. And they went to town.
Made lots of bad decisions and mounds of money. And they scammed everyone.
They made an issue of recess, vaccinated seven and eight year olds with grit and rigor, and taught kids to read a novel with a microscope. They ignored music and art … and did their best to wipe out childhood.
Kids got glued to tablets and blue screens. Smiles went away … and parents hired tutors and shrinks.
Testing became the new monkey bars. Teachers became facilitators. And the language of education was reduced to acronyms everyone pretended to understand.
They insisted that no one really understood math … and they were gonna teach us what mankind never knew.
And we all know how that turned out.
Those reforms did nothing for the kids trapped in the worst schools. They were a waste. A sorry waste.
So here we are … a decade later … and a bazillion dollars down the drain.
Inner city schools are still as bad as ever. Minorities are still getting hosed. Teachers and unions and politicians are still more important than any child.
Everything has stood still. And still no one wants to let the sun shine in … because no one wants to see the mess.
Mostly … they don’t wanna have to look into the eyes of those kids.
Denis Ian
Published by Michelle Moore for Denis Ian ... educator/writer
Bio for Denis Ian’s Scribbles, all content collected up until Denis’ passing to heaven on January 7, 2019 is maintained here by Michelle, for the world to continue to enjoy:
"Nullus Equus Stercus"
Iona College History/economics Class of 1972 BA & Ms. Ed 1976, Iona Preparatory School 1968, From New Rochelle, NY, Lives in Westchester, NY.
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
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Missives Worth Reading 
Thanks for cross posting appreciate it.
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This will come across as politically incorrect (not that I care), but can we finally wake up and forbid the social engineers from destroying America in the name of helping “the poor”, “the underserved”, “the minorities”. This game they play, has been played over and over and over for decades AND NO ONE is better off. (Well, except for the social engineers. They’re more powerful and wealthy than ever.)
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Greetings, well put together website you have got presently.
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