Citizens Task Force On Common Core Responds To Chamber Event

MONTGOMERY, Ala., July 11, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Members of a citizens task force formed to stop Common Core in Alabama, quickly responded to the claims of the education community at Wednesday's Chamber event, which members say are misleading and cannot be documented.

Elois Zeanah, president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, stated that the meeting was dominated by education and chamber members, from reports she's received, and facilitators tried hard to squash any discussion outside the two questions posed by the Chamber for discussion.  Questions dealt with problems dealing with content of Common Core standards and the process used and how to mitigate these public concerns instead of the fundamental question of centralized control.

Zeanah stated, "No wonder facilitators had a hard time keeping their groups on topic.  These two questions are laughable, given the fatal flaws of Common Core, loss of parental control and state sovereignty in education, and how children's privacy is being put at risk – not to mention how Alabama's Plan 2020, which implements Common Core, is based on race-based standards.  Let's get serious here!"

Sharon Sewell, director of Alabamians United for Excellence in Education, stated that the Chamber meeting was obviously staged since not one member of their coalition, which lead the state's opposition to Common Core, was asked to represent the other side.

"Instead," Sewell stated, "the Chamber had the superintendent of education and a number of education officials under his direction to represent the pro-Common Core side, yet allowed only ten minutes to those opposed to Common Core to speak, and the Chamber did not select the strongest opposition to speak.  With this type of imbalance in presentation, it's somewhat hypocritical to represent the Chamber meeting as a forum to 'bring proponents and opponents of the standards into the same conversation.'"

Both Sewell and Zeanah were quite passionate in their rebuttals to educators' claims that Alabama retains control over curriculum and tests despite implementation of Common Core, and that the highly personal, non-academic information collected on students will not be shared outside Alabama. 

They pointed to documents that prove otherwise from Alabama's own Plan 2020, the federal law on student privacy that the Obama administration changed, and federal requirements for states to develop data bases on students that are "interoperable" in return for receiving federal money, which Alabama accepted.

SOURCE Alabama Federation of Republican Women