Bill Bennett's Loop-de-Loop

WISHY-WASHY AS ALWAYS!

"...in 2009, a collaborative involving the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers began to discuss the need for common standards and accountability. The end goal is that an "A" in math in New Jersey should be equivalent to an "A" in math in Louisiana, or in California, and so on.

"So began the coordinated effort from governors, educators and legislators to compose benchmarked standards that would be the same across state lines. The product became the Common Core State Standards. Its genesis was local and its purpose was to lift education performance through state, not federal, collaboration. This was the original intent of the Common Core. It is a worthy and necessary idea." 

~Bill Bennett, CNN

U.S. Education Secretary once said he was not in "that loop." What loop?

A pretty important loop of people who allowed the merger of the United States and Soviet Education systems. Culminating in Common Core. COMMUNIST Common Core. Read on....

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/02/opinion/bennett-common-core

Start with Bill Bennett's Dec. 2, 2014 CNN article, "Common Core has no better alternative," quoted above, where he concluded:

Some of the criticisms leveled against Common Core stem from mistakes made in local implementations -- not from a uniform federal mandate. It is ironic that the very thing which many of Common Core's critics value the most -- local control -- has often resulted in curricula, subject matter, readings, and exercises in local classrooms that are objectionable, substandard, or politically tendentious.

If Common Core fails, education reform will regress and American students' flat or falling test results in learning will continue. It must be noted that many of Common Core's critics still lack a persuasive alternative or any alternative at all.

Under Bill Bennett's tenure. U.S. PRESIDENT REAGAN AND SOVIET PRESIDENT GORBACHEV SIGNED AN AGREEMENT IN 1985 calling for 

cooperation in the field of science and technology and additional agreements in other specific fields, including the humanities and social sciences; the facilitation of the exchange by appropriate organizations of educational and teaching materials, including textbooks, syllabi and curricula, materials on methodology, samples of teaching instruments and audiovisual aids, and the exchange of primary and secondary school textbooks and other teaching materials.... The conducting of joint studies on textbooks between appropriate organizations in the United States and the Ministry of Education of the U.S.S.R. [emphasis added]

At the same time, the Carnegie Corporation signed agreements with the Soviet Academy of Sciences which resulted in “joint research on the application of computers in early elementary education, focusing especially on the teaching of higher level skills and complex subjects to younger children.”

The U.S.-Soviet education agreements were discussed in an article entitled “U.S. and Soviets to Share Insights on Computers” by Fred M. Hechinger, education editor, in the December 10, 1985 issue of the New York Times:

A meeting of American and Soviet educational computer experts has produced an agreement to exchange specialists involved in the improvement of elementary and secondary education.

The initial American-Soviet exchange is intended as a first step toward cooperation among education reformers from a number of countries, including Britain and Japan. One goal is to reduce the present emphasis on training computer programmers, and stress instead the computer’s potential to restructure the education of young children, beginning in third grade or earlier.

Several issues are listed for joint investigation. They include computer-based methods to develop creative abilities of primary school pupils, creation and testing of software for use in primary school, and proposals for the restructuring of the curriculum and of teaching methods through the use of computers in the early grades.

Additional issues include evaluation of the training of teachers in the use of computers and elimination of teachers’ fear of computers, and creation of Soviet-American pilot projects for joint experiments. [emphasis added]

On December 20, 1985, during a “Contact America” radio interview with U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, co-host Malcolm Lawrence asked Bennett if he was involved in the United States-Soviet education exchanges. Bennett responded, “No. I’m not in that loop.” 

Pray tell, what “loop” was he in during his tenure as the top official dealing with American education? The writer was informed by the U.S. Department of State that both agreements were still in effect after the so-called break-up of the Soviet Union. (See Appendix XXIII of my book the deliberate dumbing down of america).

A March 16, 1994 issue of Education Week discussed Bill Bennett's "Modern Red Schoolhouse" (maybe "red" has a double meaning?) funded by the New American Schools Development Corporation in its bid to set up pilot projects in education reform in 1992. Ed Week's "Back to the Future—with Funding from NASDC and Direction from the Hudson Institute, the Modern Red Schoolhouse Updates an American Icon for the 90’s," authored by Lynn Olson, explained Bill Bennett's radical reform design.

Of all the design teams funded by the New American Schools Development Corporation in 1992, the Modern Red Schoolhouse was the one with the closest ties to the Republican Administration then in power and its ideological heart....

…Its chief sponsor is the Hudson Institute, a public policy center based in Indianapolis that made its reputation analyzing national security issues. Hudson’s board of trustees includes former Gov. Pierre S. du Pont, IV, of Delaware and former Vice President Dan Quayle.

William J. Bennett, a U.S. Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan, served as chairman of the design team. Bennett, an outspoken proponent of private school choice, left the project last year when he formed Empower America, a conservative think tank based in Washington. Bennett once described the Modern Red Schoolhouse to The Washington Times as a “conservative plan with the three C’s at its core: content, character, and choice.”

Yet, in many ways, the Modern Red Schoolhouse defies political or ideological labels. Some of its instructional approaches, such as multi-age homerooms and self-paced learning, would be considered “radical” by observers on both sides of the political aisle. [emphasis added]

And now good Americans are supposed to listen to Bennett's loopy, wishy-washy words of wisdom on Communist Core?

Of course, former Secretary of Eucation Bennett was deeply involved in the tax-funded charter school movement, where he pioneered his own virtual charter school, experimenting with computer cyber education. Read "The Choice Charade" series posted on my website for the in-depth history of his shenanigans and deceptions. Asked by savvy home schoolers, "Secretary Bennett: What test will your virtual  (computer) curriculum?", he responded:  "The federal National Assessment (NAEP),  since the charter school is federally funded."