Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Alabama Eagle Forum has announced that they will be holding a press conference at 1:00 pm to discuss their effort to stop the implementation of the controversial Common Core Standards by Alabama public schools.
Senator Dick Brewbaker (R) from Montgomery has introduced Senate Bill 190 to ban the use of tax dollars from being used to implement Common Core Standards on the children of Alabama. Similarly Eagle Forum is supporting Alabama State Representative Jim Barton’s (R) from Mobile House Bill 254. Eagle Forum said that the bill would return local control of education, repeal the adoption of Common Core, protect family privacy & prohibit state bodies from compiling/sharing non-academic, “personal” data, and would prohibit the State Board of Education from ceding control over education to any entity outside of the state of Alabama.
Following the press conference there will be a 3:00 public hearing in the Star Wars Room on the 8th floor of the statehouse to hear testimony from Common Core opponents.
Former Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott said, “These standards make every child a cog in a machine. There is nothing exceptional about this great nation when you make everybody the same [“common”, ordinary], when you don’t expect greatness from everyone… Let’s see how high individual determination can take our children and not have the tragedy of Common Core.” Only Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska and Minnesota have refused to surrender control of their educational standards to the federal government, but conservatives in over a dozen other states (including Alabama) have launched efforts to repeal Common Core. 19 state Senators have agreed to co-sponsor Brewbaker’s bill.
Conservative Columnist Michelle Malkin wrote, “For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.”
Malkin continued, “Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but raise achievement standards. Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.” In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.”
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) has opposed Common Core Standards which were adopted during the Riley administration.
Alabama Eagle Forum is urging their supporters to attend Wednesday’s events and contact their state representative and Senator urging them to defund common core.
