Op-ed: Common Core and other education mandates are the problems

I am on the Town Council in Killingly and see the direct effect of the 150+ education mandates we are hit with at the town level. These mandates ARE the cause in large part and are NOT part of the solutions. If you want to solve educational issues AND budget issues, the answer is easy. Strip the mandates and return control and the money to the towns and cities and let them, in conjunction with parents and teachers, best decide how to educate their children and use their resources. No bureaucracy can ever replace that, no matter how they try and no matter how much money is thrown at it.

THE most destructive mandate EVER hoisted on this country and state is by far COMMON CORE! This is dangerous in so many ways that it is not possible to list them all here. This is a destructive and insidious program that the state should IMMEDIATELY withdraw from! Not only is it an inferior and THE ultimate “one size fits all” disaster, but it WILL blow up municipal budgets even faster with its requirements in curriculum and technology costs.

For the students and teachers, it creates sub par curriculum designed to eliminate creativity, autonomy and make good little mind-numbed robots out of our kids. Who, by the way, are now becoming more disheartened and scared about going to school as their education has become a nonstop train of near daily “assessments” driven to not help students, but to create MASSIVE databases on our children from the time they begin school until they graduate with the homogenous goal of going to college — which is NOT the right path for every student. The proof is everywhere, with parents here, as well from around the country, sharing countless yet strikingly similar accounts of this disaster.

The privacy implications are truly frightening. Common Core is social engineering and is politically driven and does NOTHING to truly inspire and educate students. It will only drive out even faster the really great teachers that are among us and leave us only with those willing to be part of “the system” who will not push back or question its goals and results. Results from states already further down the road with Common Core are clear — it is failing students in every aspect, driving a further wedge between parents and schools, and bankrupting budgets.

Common Core is a bad bill of goods. It was developed by know-it-all, busy-body elitists who are so-called experts in education. It was then packaged and seeded with money by the U.S. Department of Education and sold to states under the guise of better education and, of course, tied to grants and other federal funds in return for accepting this poison pill. And when the seed money runs out, guess who is left holding the bag?

How is the education of a child in Killingly, CT, the same as one in Rapid City, Iowa, or Los Angeles, CA?? Answer: It is NOT!

Brian Gosper serves on the Killingly Town Council.