Inside the Mammoth Backlash to Common Core - Mother Jones

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2. link and snip

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/common-core-education-reform-backlash-obamacare

Supporters of Common Core were trying to paint all opponents as right-wingers and tea party people, and here's me, who has been accused of being a communist, a socialist, a terrorist—you name it!" Naison says, laughing. He believes Common Core, like No Child Left Behind, is turning inner-city kids into lab rats, shuttled from school to school because of standardized exams that have turned their classrooms into little more than test prep. The problem with public education, he and his allies contend, isn't lacking standards; it's crushing inequality. No concoction of math benchmarks and informational texts will give kids in the Bronx the advantages of their peers in Westchester, let alone Helsinki. But Common Core will cost schools a lot of time and money that could be spent elsewhere. (The city of Los Angeles, for instance, spent $1 billion from a school construction bond on iPads outfitted by Pearson for the purpose of Common Core testing, rather than using it to fix crumbling schools.)