(Hour 1b) Michael Brickman is the National Policy Director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute where he furthers educational excellence as a commentator on education reform issues.
He believes that Common Core standards are superior to NH’s old standards.
Our humble host couldn’t disagree more and challenged Brickman on several points in this very feisty exchange.
“State-Led” Common Core Pushed by Federally Funded Nonprofit
Earthquake hammers Common Core national education standards
I’ve seen a lot of this reasoning–“Well, the old standards were low.” Yes…but that doesn’t mean you replace them with new low standards that are poorly written and conceptualized and developmentally inappropriate not to mention untested and not internationally benchmarked. Why not use the high standards of the highest performing states before Common Core?
Why not? Because the elephant in the room wants to torment us and our children and foundations like these work for the elephant. If we name the elephant and the root of the problem we would be called racist, conspiracy theorists or crazy Bible believers maybe even anarchists, or enemies of the state. I suppose being called such things is worse that handing over our children for tribute. This shows a lack of grit, or moral fiber on our part, funny how they test for that regularly. It gives their plot away doesn’t it?
Nice job Girard. Now if you could just educate the remaining media Common Core State Standards would become part of our history books!