In May 2014, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal compared opponents to Common Core to “barbarians at the gate.” It is that view which served as the basis of attacks on HB 2190 and the many parents, teachers, and education activists who supported it.
Those great unwashed masses were simply too uncivilized and uneducated to appreciate what the corporate masters had granted them. Support for HB 2190 was not based on careful examination and critical thinking. No, it was based on the animalistic reactions of savages, who lived in fear of everything.
Once dehumanized, Common Core proponents had an eager general population ready to be anything but those people.
Using resources, unimagined by the average public school parent, or teacher, the chambers of corporate commerce engaged in a massive attack on anyone who would interfere with their plan to turn public schools into cheap human resource centers.
Teachers learned their lesson when they watched as Huppenthal’s employee’s engaged in the marginalization through accusation against school teacher and author of The Cult of Common Core, Brad McQueen. Making unsubstantiated claims about the conservative school teacher, the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) crew went to work to silence and punish McQueen for the sin of independent thought.
The campaign against Common Core critics has occurred on both the national and local level. As Diane Ravitch, Assistant Secretary of Education in the President George H.W. Bush administration writes: “Arne Duncan has tried his best to portray critics as wing nuts from the fringes of American politics whose views should be ignored or as whiny “white suburban moms” who mistakenly thought their child was brilliant, but it hasn’t worked. Most of those who speak out for Common Core are either paid to do so, or work for organizations funded by the Gates Foundation, which paid out between $200 million and $2 billion to write and promote the Common Core.”
In Arizona there was no shortage of those people to work on the legislators and the media. Former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Lisa Graham Keegan, who serves as the Executive Director of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s Foundation “A for Arizona” initiative, Emily Gullickson Program Director of “A for Arizona,” Rebecca Gau and Kelly McManus of Stand for Arizona, Pearl Chang Esau President & CEO of Expect More Arizona, and a bevy of Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) teachers of the year spread the anti-barbarian message.
A quick glance reveals that “A for Arizona” is funded in part by the Apollo Education Group of which Carnegie Learning is a subsidiary, Stand for Arizona is funded by the Walton Family and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations, and Expect More Arizona was also started with funding from the Apollo Education Group.
By the time the Arizona Senate Education Committee convened to consider HB 2190, at least hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent by the corporations and their lackeys on lobbyists, flacks, and media buys in Arizona. That money and the marginalization combined with the inactivity/self-preservation by newly-elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, paved the way for HB2190’s death-by-narrative.
Graham Keegan, led off the “expert” testimony before the Senate Committee. Graham Keegan as part of a “shadow faction of charter school operators and former state superintendents” that controls Governor Doug Ducey’s education policy, according to Douglas was treated deferentially by the senators at first.
Graham Keegan, former advisor to Common Core cheerleader Jeb Bush, began her testimony with false claims and misrepresentations. She lost all credibility with education activists when she tied the current improvement in student performance in Arizona to the Common Core adoption in 2010. However, she jumped the shark when she hyperbolically declared that Arizona would be prohibited from using phonics in classrooms if HB2190 passed.
At least Graham Keegan was honest enough to admit that the world–class standards she and her crew were fighting for were not substantially different than the standards sought by Finchem. She also admitted that she could not cite with any specificity one standard that had changed under the Common Core scheme.
It was Graham Keegan’s bold claim that “regardless of what how the bill was amended we may not use standards that are part of the Common Core,” that elicited a strong response from the senators. Throughout her testimony Graham Keegan continued to refer to a provision in the original version of HB2190 that prohibited that state of Arizona from duplicating “substantially” standards adopted by other states. In response, Sen. Steve Smith inquired whether or not the bill had been amended to remove the substantially duplicate provision in a House amendment. Graham Keegan pleaded ignorance, and Ward called on Senate staffer, Matt Simon, for an answer.
Simon, who had been relying on the pro-Common Core State Board of Education staff for the information he was feeding to Ward about the bill, claimed he was unaware of any amendment. Smith then called on Finchem for the answer.
In his plain-spoken, good-old-western-boy manner Finchem explained that the provision had been removed. Finchem read the amendment into the record, “Finchem Floor Amendment #3 to the Education Committee Amendment to HB 2190 dated 3/3/15 at 3:58 P.M. removes the prohibition on the adoption of standards that are substantially similar to standards used by 20 or more states and prohibits standards that are substantially similar to the Common Core Standards or Arizona College and Career Ready Standard.”
The bill passed out of Committee on a 5 -2 vote.
HB2190 died an ignoble death on the Senate floor after Finchem and Senate leadership rejected an amendment offered by Gov. Ducey that would have completely gutted the bill, but would have allowed Ducey to wear the anti-Common Core mantle. The bill died at the hands of Ducey’s boys in the Senate despite the fact that Sen. Yee offered an amendment stipulated that the “State Board of Education may utilize resources and materials or portions of standards from other states in the process of adopting or revising academic content standards and corresponding assessments.”
It wasn’t enough to gut the bill and give the Legislature a win. The Common Core crew needed to put the masses in their place.
A bill which would have clarified a parent’s right to opt their children out of taking the untested AZMerit test died as well. All was not lost though. The befuddled Superintendent Diane Douglas fought for – and won – a symbolic bill that required the state Department of Education to let groups raising money for schools sell “foods of minimal nutritional value,” like cupcakes.
On April 7, as parents frantically fought with school administrators, who were denying them the right to opt their children out of the data mining test, Expect Arizona was thanking their supporters “for helping to achieve important wins for Arizona’s students and teachers.”
The real winners were Apollo’s Carnegie Learning, AZMerit developer A.I.R. (American Institutes for Research), and the chambers of commerce who are guaranteed future workers who can read technical manuals.
Brad McQueen spoke truth to power before the Senate Education Committee when he said Common Core was nothing more than a “complete transformation of our education delivery system.” He related to the senators his experience while working on the testing of the Common Core-based PARCC test. “The PARCC people kept talking about the new way of thinking. They continually said they wanted the kids to be able to repeat back the opinions of the experts that were in front of them on the test.” McQueen argued that “teachers in the classroom teach their kids to examine multiple viewpoints and then develop their own position and way of thinking,” to which PARCC staff responded that “that was the old way.” McQueen concluded, “Common Core has nothing to do with education it has everything to do with centralizing power over a kid’s mind – away from their parents and into the waiting hands of big government.”
So, while the hands of big business fill-up with cash, in the end, the powers-that-be said “let them eat cake.” Cupcakes.
Part I: Expect More Arizona wants public to expect less
Part II: Common Core advocates used questionable tactics
Related articles:
Amphi board member opts out, bill back
Ducey back peddles on Common Core, wants to keep federal standards
AZ Senate Education Committee passes Common Core kill bill
Badass Teachers oppose Common Core
There is common ground on Common Core
HB2190 challenges Common Core crony capitalism
Promotion of Common Core by the Department of Education is a Violation of Existing Federal Law