GOP Expels Common Core

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CLEVELAND (ChurchMilitant.com) - The GOP platform, approved by delegates this week in Cleveland, officially expels the standardized school curriculum known as Common Core.

The education section of their platform reads:

We likewise repeat our longstanding opposition to the imposition of national standards and assessments, encourage the parents and educators who are implementing alternatives to Common Core, and congratulate the states which have successfully repealed it. Their education reform movement calls for choice-based, parent-driven accountability at every stage of schooling.

Common Core has been heavily criticized for its unbending standardized curriculum. The GOP platform denounces this approach. "We reject a onesize-fits-all approach to education and support a broad range of choices for parents and children at the state and local level."

This standardized program has come under fire with the release of a recent study by ACT, an independent, nonprofit organization named after their popular American College Test. This study highlighted the deficiencies of the program as viewed by educators and employers.

The ACT study showed:

1. College instructors want an increase in students' ability to generate sound ideas, which wasn't developed by Common Core's focus on source-based writing in high school.

2. Elementary teachers feel the need to supplement math topics omitted in Common Core.

3. Math teachers in Grades 4–7 routinely introduce topics relevant in STEM coursework (science, technology, engineering and math) which they report is lagging in Common Core.

GOP delegates are emphasizing parental rights in educating their children apart from the imposed content that comes with the Common Core program.

"Parents have a right to direct their children's education, care, and upbringing," the platform reads. "We support a constitutional amendment to protect that right from interference by states, the federal government, or international bodies such as the United Nations."

Framers of their platform approved of private schools and homeschooling which has become popular among conservative parents. "We support options for learning, including homeschooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools."

The platform also called for bibles to be returned to the classroom as they were in the early years of this country. "A good understanding of the Bible being indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry, we encourage state legislatures to offer the Bible in a literature curriculum as an elective in America's high schools."

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