Monday, November 25, 2013

Common Core curriculum company formed three years before standards were developed

The idea that local school districts will develop their own curriculum to go along with Common Core Standards has been promoted endlessly by Common Core proponents, but that does not appear to be the way it was planned by the Gates Foundation. A national curriculum is being planned:

To understand the answer, one needs to go back to 2007.  That is the year that Common Core Inc. was founded, three years before the standards were made public. In 2009, it received over a half million dollars in the form of a grant from the Gates Foundation to write curriculum for standards that had not yet been released nor adopted by states.
Last week, Catholic Education Daily reported on the connection between Common Core Inc. and the Gates Foundation in a story entitled “Common Core is Curriculum, Contrary to Advocates’ Claims.”
The story reports that despite Bill Gates’ claim that there was no need to build national Common Core curriculum, he has, through his grant program, quietly funded its development in excess of  $10 million, with Common Core Inc. being the first to receive a grant. According to authors Gigante and Archbold, “Despite the overlap between corporate branding, mission, funding and leadership, Common Core Inc. claims that it is ‘not affiliated with the Common Core Standards’.”  The article suggests that although some advocates of the Common Core claim that they want to only nationalize standards, their true intent is to nationalize a still experimental curriculum. Despite repeated attempts, Common Core Inc. has not responded to their inquiries.

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