Bill Gates Shouldn't Be Dictating Education Policy,

and Common Core needs to be thrown into the garbage can where it belongs.

There is no defense AT ALL for this mandate which drives a stake through the heart of American public education. It is literally the end of the line because if all kids in all public schools in all parts of the country are doing the same thing, why bother with teachers? Why not just stick these kids in front of a computer all day, monitored by part-time, ten-buck-an-hour teacher aides? This is nothing but a complete disaster as it goes against everything known about child development and virtually destroys all chances for students to succeed in life. Only the economic elite will have access to live teachers in private schools; from kindergarten on everybody else will be stuck in front of a goddamned stupid computer equipped with Microsoft software and Pearson "curriculum" and not be able to interact with adults and with other students.

(By the way, teacher aides in my part of the woods--Oregon--are actually doing jobs that should be done by fully credentialed teachers, and they are not closely supervised by those who ARE licensed teachers whose jobs aren't to teach but merely supervise those who are teaching, the non-teachers. Absolutely illegal, but they are doing it with RTI and a lot of special education instruction in order to save money on salaries and benefits. I've seen it firsthand. They also use aides to oversee credit recovery classes--also illegal to use them--which is basically online study. No licensed teachers supervise.)

That's because neoliberals and their billionaire backers don't believe in ANY education AT ALL for children beyond middle school because few jobs worldwide require anything but rudimentary reading and math skills.

Bill Gates and his "common core standards" are totally evil. There is no other word to describe it. Even calling it "shit" makes it sound good.

Arne Duncan is merely a puppet for these bastards who want to rape and pillage the public sector for private gain and eventually do away with it so they don't have to pay any taxes to support the common good.