Voucher Programs Need to Be Cut Off From the Common Core

By Shane Vander Hart

I’m a school choice advocate, and full disclosure – my wife and I (mostly my wife) homeschool our three children.  That said I’m concerned by how current voucher programs are structured with more and more strings attached.  A friend of ours, Melissa Smith wrote a letter-to-the-editor that was published in the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel that speaks to this matter succinctly so I wanted to share it here for our readers:

Indiana needs to opt out of Common Core

The Aug. 1 article about Dick Morris’ appearance in Fort Wayne failed to mention one of the most interesting moments in the evening. It occurred when a member of the audience asked him about the Common Core, and he admitted he really didn’t know much about it and was going to look into it.

Morris and other organizations, such as Americans for Prosperity, who are actively promoting vouchers, have a responsibility to take the time to investigate the Common Core. What they will find is that the Common Core state standards and the federally funded assessments that accompany it, are the antitheses of the promises made by the school choice movement.

Here in Indiana, voucher or no voucher, the “choices” parents have will soon be narrowed down to only one — the Common Core. Anyone wondering why Indiana’s adoption of Common Core’s “one-size-fits all” system of national standards, curriculum and testing flies in the face of school choice need only Google the document “Closing the Door on Innovation,” which was signed by The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice’s president, Robert Enlow, among others.

Legislators in Indiana should follow states like Texas, Virginia and Alaska, and pass Sen. Scott Schneider’s legislation to opt Indiana out of the Common Core initiative. If they don’t, the Common Core will certainly be the attached strings that sink the voucher movement, private and parochial school and ultimately even home-schooling as well.

Melissa R. Smith (links added by me)

Originally posted at Truth In American Education