Common (rotten to the) Core Education

So, let's talk about Common Core. You know, that's the latest ponzi scheme designed to prove to uninformed parents that their school district is nothing short of, well there aren't enough superlatives to fill that bucket, and to hide the complete failure of NCLB. A discussion of Common Core cannot begin without a bit of history on NCLB. That is the failed system which cost billion, was touted as the cure all for education by educators and which the experts (are there really any?) shoved down our throats at another billions of wasted dollars. Seems with the accountability of the NCLB program and the failure of the education systems to produce required results suddenly the expert proponents ran away from the program quicker than a thief stealing your wallet! Why? Because by their own standards about 80% of the schools in NH FAILED! That is they were found to be in need of improvement. One result of this poor performance was the exit of students from poorly performing public schools to private education or the better public schools. Having failed at producing the results required of themselves and being totally embarrassed by the results rather than improve on the performance they ask for a waiver and thus is born Common Core! That folks is not performance that is lowering the bar. Doing so we find that poor performing schools are now designated by the state NOT the Feds AND they re-brand the failure from "in need of improvement" to "focus and/or priority" schools! Magically now  just 5% of the previous 80% of poor performing schools will be designated as focus/priority schools. We just improved 75% of our schools by changing a definition! What a great country America!!
 Finally the ultimate insult to parents who previously did not buy into the failure of our schools. Under NCLB they took the available option of sending their kids to a truly well performing school rather than their sub-standard, failing, under-performing local institution. Under Common Core this option is NOT available! Taken away by your NH Dept of Education the states strongest proponent of dumb down America.