Tag Archives: Gene Arnold

Former NC General Assembly member and board member of NC Schools Public Forum went on NCSPIN and talked about Common Core. What we heard was the same talking points coming out of the NC Chamber. In fact, Arnold would go on to say the Chamber will use political donations as a threat in order to force keeping Common Core. Keep reading, we’ll get to the clips from the show.

This set of pro-Common Core talking points used by Arnold is unsurprising for a few reasons. For one thing, Arnold is a board member of Public School Forum NC, which is partnered with the NC Chamber of Commerce. Another reason being that Chambers of Commerce and Business groups in multiple states all bought the Common Core sales job.

The NC Chamber’s Education Foundation has just such an initiative called “Hire Standards”. The NC Chamber’s Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) according to their site and 990 forms. The Education Foundation received $25,000 from the NC Chamber in 2012 according to their Schedule 1 in their 990 tax filing. 2013 is not available yet, but a good guess is the amount is larger. Make no mistake, “Hire Standards” is a who’s who of pro-Common Core, including the owners of the copyrighted standards, The CCSSO — of which State Superintendent Atkinson is now President-elect. Conflict of interest anyone?

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