Why Conservatives Should Support the Common Core

by Sol Stern

For all of the legitimate criticisms that might be made of this or that aspect of the Common Core State Standards (for the role of the federal government, the issue of excessive testing, the mix of imaginative literature vs. "informational texts") the Standards still present the best opportunity we have had in the past few decades for restoring a content rich curriculum and an appreciation of the founding principles of the republic back into America's K-12 classrooms. Beginning in the 1960s, progressives and leftists moved into positions of influence in the universities and the schools of education. The result was that the concept of a coherent, content rich curriculum and American republican values were virtually erased from the schools over the next half century. Conservatives (and Americans generally) who support a restoration of a knowledge rich curriculum and American principles to the classroom should see the Common Core as an opening and a possibility. It's understandable that the education left (people like Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol and Bill Ayers) now regard the Common Core as a threat to their ideological hegemony in the Ed schools. But I will show that the arguments made against the Common Core so far by the Tea Party and Conservative pundits such as Michelle Malkin and George Will are short sighted and reflect a lack of understanding of what the Standards actually call for in the area of classroom instruction. The Common Core represents an historical opening for combating and reversing the influence of educational progressivism in America's classrooms.

48 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

Sol Stern was an American journalist and author of the book Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice (2003) and wrote extensively on education reform.