Christie: Rotten to the Core?

On May 28, 2015, Governor Christie announced his grand intention to move away from Common Core Standards and to begin to develop the New Jersey College and Career Readiness Standards.

Wow! Those are really hopeful sounding standards! Were you as excited as me when you first heard this?

Did you also feel, though, like you've heard the words "college and career readiness" before? As an educator, I hear them all the time: in faculty meetings, in emails from administrators, and as here, in the edu-speak of posturing politicians.

Feeling like I had heard them before I decided to do a little digging. Here's what I found:

http://www.achieve.org/what-college-and-career-ready

Achieve, Inc. has been promoting the idea of college and career readiness for several years now. And why shouldn't they? After all, these are worthy and laudable goals that we should all aspire to.

The only problem is this:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/1999/10/OPP369

Achieve, Inc. is a non-profit organization sponsored in whole by the Gates Foundation.

And here we go again...

So, while I sincerely hope that Governor Christie means to "return to New Jersey’s leaders... control over the education our students receive and wrest it away from Washington, DC bureaucrats", please forgive me for having my doubts.

I will say, however, that I think it's WONDERFUL that politicians and the private interests they represent are being forced to strategize, re-name, and re-package their failed educational platforms. This is because of US- the people of the United States- who have spoken up against the tyranny of the ultra-rich and their attempts to monopolize and privatize our public schools.

The fight is started, but the fight is by no means won. In a similar story, PARCC recently announced its intention to reduce overall testing time by 90 minutes. Hooray for us! This also appears to be an effort on their part to mollify the justifiably upset students, parents, and educators who are up in arms about the invasion which standardized testing currently poses in our classrooms.

But it is not yet enough. Our STUDENTS matter more than money. Our CHILDREN are not mere data points to be calculated and corrected on a billiard-ball bounce through school. Rather, they are our most precious resource, and their intellectual, as well as creative, social, and emotional developments need to be looked after. And we as concerned parents, educators, and citizens cannot rest until this- and only this- is accomplished.