How Common Core Undermines School Choice

Read an interesting article by Mary Thompson entitled “Have You Checked Your School Choice Lately.“

Thompson exposes the fact that the purported goals of the School Choice movement are nullified, as long as Common Core prevails.  She explains the genesis of the School Choice movement, which she points out has actually resulted in the “public-izing” of private schools, rather than the privatization of public ones.  She writes:

“Parents have sought escape from public schools as one step after another in the on-going process became too objectionable for them to accept. Vouchers seemed to some to provide an answer to their dilemma. Then the agenda for charter schools was packaged with the mix, and the buzzword became, “school choice.” The combination comprised the Trojan Horse Twins of voucher and charter schools. Both are designed to destroy institutional fundamentals. Charter schools undermine principles of local elected authority resulting in taxation without representation. Vouchers compromise the “private” in private schools through government funding. Vouchers will “public-ize” private schools rather than “privatize” public schools as some opponents of vouchers claim.”

She concludes with the following:

 “When private schools use Common Core Standards, and perhaps other nationally spawned “one size fits all” program and uses the same yardstick against which to measure themselves, they render themselves more and more indistinguishable from the public schools, a form of suicide of private schools, while parents are searching for what made private and religious schools different.”

Hoosier parents, grandparents, and teachers must let Indiana legislators know that leaving the Common Core strings attached to the Indiana voucher law is NOT acceptable.  We are smart enough to know that there is no “choice,” when all schools don the same Common Core straitjacket!