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'You can't do this!' Parents revolt against 'Obamacore'
'It's truly a grassroots effort. It is extraordinary'
Published: 2 days ago

The battle over Common Core is far from over. More and more people are joining the fight against it, even in states where it is considered a done deal. Parents and concerned citizens now realize what’s at stake is the complete makeover of America’s schools in the image of Common Core. And in all likelihood, homeschools and private schools will eventually be required to follow the national standards, too.

“There are a lot of organizations that have sprung up for the express purpose of fighting Common Core,” said Jane Robbins, senior fellow at the American Principles Project.

She has spoken to Republican, tea-party and 9/12 groups and people who’ve started Facebook pages against Common Core.

“It’s truly a grassroots effort. It is extraordinary,” Robbins said, explaining that no one thought the movement would get this big. “The whole point was the way they treated this was that it would be a done deal before anyone found out. They thought people would be sheep and roll over and accept what the ‘experts’ told them to do. But it hasn’t turned out that way.”

She doesn’t think the opposition to Common Core is going to fade away.

“If those pushing Common Core think this is just going to stay under wraps and it will die out,” Robbins said, “they are in for a great surprise. People will not stand for it when their children are involved.”

Opponents to Common Core say it is a states-rights issue, a teacher-rights issue and ultimately a parents-rights issue because it is about children and their futures. They say Common Core will not benefit kids and, instead, will benefit big publishing companies that produce the tests and textbooks (like Pearson) and software companies (like Microsoft) that provide online testing. These companies stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars in the billion-dollar education industry.

Who’s profiting?

It’s not just the textbook and testing companies that will profit, according to Robbins.

“It’s the groups who want to be in charge, and those people are in the federal government and in state departments of education,” she said. “They are happy to let the federal government tell them what to do. It’s the people in the trade associations. Those are the people who benefit from transferring control from the local level.”

The Arkansas State Board of Education approved the standards in 2010, and Common Core is now impacting math teaching.

“All of a sudden, we cannot help our own children,” said one parent.

“It’s like they’re trying to take the parents out of the education process,” she said. “We have no books; we have no guidance to help our children.”

Robbins said parents need to remember they are “in charge of their children’s education, and the people who want to assume that control, especially those in government, work for them.”

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She emphasized: “The thing parents have to understand, and I think they are beginning to understand, is that this education monolith has grown over the past 50 years without any constitutional authority, and if they stop and say, ‘You can’t do this!,’ it will crumble.”

The battle against Common Core can be won, Robbins said, “but people will have to wake up, and they will have to decide that they are free-born American citizens, and they don’t have to do what they are told by people to whom they have not given that authority.”

Terrence O. Moore, author of “The Story Killers: A Common Sense Case Against the Common Core,” thinks the Common Core proponents have “overstepped.” Now parents are starting to figure out what the changes mean.

“And the prospect of a national curriculum is really starting to bother people. So they’re looking at what we can do that’s better,” he said.

Like Robbins, Moore thinks people are starting to see that the problems in education didn’t just start with Common Core.

“They are waking up to what we’ve had for decades,” Moore told WND. “People now see that their schools are not as good as they thought they were. Homeschooling, charter schools, private schools show a clear desire for school reform among 10-20 percent of the people.”

Moore thinks the private initiative is a hopeful sign.

“I hope that students and parents will pay more attention to what’s going on in the classroom,” he said. “I don’t think they will just lapse into indifference. The more they find out, the worse it is, and this will have to have electoral consequences and consequences for the way schools are set up.”

‘Nationalized education’

As a historian, Moore, who is assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College, takes the long view....

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