Chris Nicastro thinks we are stupid- Missouri Standards are Common Core with a different name

Chris Nicastro thinks we are stupid.

With all of the flak, the controversial Ms. Nicastro, Missouri's Education Commissioner, has received over Common Core Standards (among other things), over the past few months, there has been more and more mention of Missouri Standards, as if this is something new that has just been introduced.

The only thing is, there isn't anyone in the state who is buying it.

The so-called Missouri Standards are the Common Core Standards, with the only change being that they are called Missouri Standards because Ms. Nicastro thinks we are not smart enough to figure it out.

Sadly, that also appears to be the approach that is being taken across the country. That's the subject of an article in today's Washington Post:

“You got a whole bunch of politicians, increasingly cross-pressured between activists who don’t want this and the obvious imperative that we have to improve our public schools,” said Andrew Rotherham, a former Clinton White House aide and a co-founder of Bellwether Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education for low-income students. “The anti-Common Core folks clearly have the momentum right now, so politicians are trying to figure out ways to address the politics of this without tossing it out the window.”

In each case, the new name is designed to impart a local flavor to the standards. One of the main criticisms of the Common Core is that national standards are replacing homegrown benchmarks.

“Here’s what we’re going to ensure: These are Florida standards,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) told a gathering of state GOP officials this month. “They’re not some national standards; they’re going to be Florida standards. This is our state. We’re not going to have the federal government telling us how to do our education system.”

Also this month, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), who is facing reelection, told a gathering of Republican women: “We don’t ever want to educate South Carolina children like they educate California children. We want to educate South Carolina children on South Carolina standards, not anyone else’s standards.”

Christopher Johnson, a branding expert, doubts that new names will quell opposition to the Common Core.

“It’s something that might be politically expedient in the short term,” said Johnson, who writes the Name Inspector blog. “They might succeed in bamboozling people who are opposed to the idea of nationwide standards by giving them local names. . . . But I think it’s skirting around the issue.”

The article itself is somewhat simplistic in its branding of Common Core opponents. There are far more reasons to oppose Common Core than the handful that are mentioned.

The idea, however, that Common Core opponents are idiots who can be fooled by these transparent label changes, is ridiculous.