This is a repost of my weekly Da Tech Guy Column:  The Clinton Core Standards

By A.P. Dillon

Common Core and the high-stakes tests associated with it continue to see enormous backlash nationwide.

In former Senator Hillary Clinton’s New York, two bills have been filed to allow for parents to opt out of the tests, however parents aren’t waiting for state approvals and are opting their children out at an incredible rate.

In multiple districts in the lower Hudson Valley, opt out rates soared with Mahopac’s middle school seeing an opt out rate of 55%.

Jumping over to the other side of the country, New Mexico students who had been protesting the PARCC test also showed an overall opt out rate of 5%. Looking at the individual schools, the rates in some schools were much higher – ranging from 9 to 36%.

The overall message being sent here is that of parental rights and local control over federal dictates and the big money behind it from public-private partnerships, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the publishing and testing behemoth, Pearson.

At an Education Roundtable this week in Iowa, Hillary Clinton’s support for the Common Core was crystal clear. So was Clinton’s position on those opposing Common Core:

“But your question is really a larger one. How did we end up at a point where we are so negative about the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation which is how our kids are educated?” – Caffeinated Thoughts

Got that? The education of our children is a “non-family enterprise”.
Clinton knows exactly how we ended up here; she was a part of it.

In response to a question about how Clinton would ‘bring the heart back into education’ in the United States, Clinton’s answer has ignited new fires.

You know when I think about the really unfortunate argument going on around Common Core it’s very painful because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort, it was actually non-partisan, it wasn’t politicized, it was trying to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, there wouldn’t be two tiers of education.  Everybody would be looking at what was to be learned and doing their best to try to achieve that,” Clinton responded. – Caffeinated Thoughts

Mercedes Schneider’s take down of these comments is not to be missed and this part of her response to Clinton’s remarks is almost exactly what I would have said:

“Implicit in Clinton’s message is that Common Core would have been just fine except that it became entangled in politics.

Get a clue, Hillary: Common Core was birthed in politics.

But I think you know that.”

Yes, she knows that all too well.  As I said earlier, she was a part of it.

Michelle Malkin reminds us of just how well Clinton knows this and where this data-driven, top-down approach to education has it roots — with NCEE, Hillary Clinton and her pal, Marc Tucker.

In the early 1990s, NCEE (established with $5 million in New York taxpayer-funded seed grants) paid Hillary Clinton more than $100,000 to direct the group’s “Workforce Skills Program” while she worked at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas. After the Clintons moved into the White House, Tucker sent a now-infamous letter to Mrs. Clinton outlining a radical progressive plan “to remold the entire American system” through a centralized national-standards Trojan Horse.  – Michelle Malkin

In addition to NCEE, another group tied to Hillary Clinton should be on the radar: The New America Foundation (NAF).

NAF is a 501(c)3 that was started in 1999 by Ted Halstead and Steve McColl and whose board includes Jonathan Soros. After weeding through their site, the main purpose of NAF is to influence national Education policy at Congressional level; they’ve already spent millions on lobbying.

NAF, while mostly politically focused and is indisputably a Left leaning organization, NAF also has formulated ‘education policy‘ goals.

Some of the more visible backers include Bill Gates, George Soros and the Tides Foundation, Microsoft, Home Depot, Rockefeller, DISH Network, Google, Facebook, Arianna Huffington and the U.S. Dept. of State.

Watch the “Welcome To New America” video. You won’t have to go far into it to see Mrs. Clinton. The clip of ‘former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’ promoting NAF comes right after Senator John McCain’s glowing testimonial. Stick around, you’ll see Van Jones too.

Laugh.. cry.. or both?

A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder of LadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org, Watchdog Wire NC