My Summer Project: Left-Right Alliance for Education

My summer project has been working with a group of education advocates across the country to construct a multi-partisan outline of common opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Today we completed the project and published an excellent resource for the Stop Common Core movement nationwide.

Last spring I came away from a Hillsdale collage lecture on the Common Core with a deep concern that the Stop Common Core movements developing throughout the nation were not coalescing around one central message that had the power to cut across the political spectrum and that the opposition to CCSSI was being widely mischaracterized as limited to only one side of the political spectrum, which is hindering the effort to get the opposing message a fair hearing in the public discourse. I was convinced that we needed a serious effort to construct a concise message that would navigate the movement out of the partisan weeds.

The next day I had a discussion with a close friend tied to the Stop Common Core movement in another state who had just that afternoon had a similar discussion with a group of advocates on her side of the country. Within a few hours the Left-Right Alliance for Education was formed to bring together advocates from across the political spectrum, and across the nation, to determine if it is possible to form a multi-partisan alliance for countering the current federal/corporate power driving education reform policy.

After weeks of deliberate, methodical discussions on key points of current education reforms in the U.S. we have finally completed the project we began three months ago. I believe the work we constructed shows that there is a wide spectrum of common political opposition to the CCSSI and I believe we can work together if we stick to those points upon which we agree. The Left-Right Alliance has developed a message as succinct as the CCSSI's own and is a resource that has the potential to be very valuable in shaping the opposition's message.

You can read the document at the Left-Right Alliance for Education but I have also included the report below: