Bill Bennett's Anti-Conservative Crusade

By: Jen Kuznicki | February 9th, 2015

Last Sunday, Chris Wallace had both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett on Fox News Sunday to discuss Common Core.



Chalking up criticism of Common Core to vilification by those who distribute misinformation, Bennett pointed to claims that it teaches Islamic radicalism or requirements to read all of Barack Obama’s speeches as some of the “mythology” being perpetuated by those against the adoption of the standards.

Is Bill Bennett terribly misinformed about how Common Core has influenced the curriculum of our schools, especially in math? Or is he finally revealing his full-fledged support of the standards?

Early in the interview, Bennett clarified his understanding of Common Core:

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Common Core are state standards for math and reading by grade, that’s all they are. Anybody who questions them should read what the standards said, and they say such tendentious things as kids should focus on arithmetic in the early grades, learn how to count, multiply and divide and subtract, and in reading they should emphasize phonics, the meaning of words and good clear expression.

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Governor Abbott countered Bennett’s point by saying that though originally this argument was the selling point of the standards to the states, the federal government is using that characterization and Race To the Top as a vehicle for persuading states to adopt the national standards. Upon that discovery, and knowing that every dollar coming from the federal government has strings attached, you would think that Bennett’s attempt to promote Common Core as an innocent, “let’s make sure our kids can read and write,” characterization would be put on its heels.

Bennett admitted that the “government put its big foot on this,” but seemed adamant that the government is not directing Common Core standards, and tried to argue that Common Core standards were developed locally. But insisting that the standards were developed locally and then applied nationally doesn’t make the standards local, does it? The fact that they are administered locally has nothing to do with how the standards are manifesting themselves from a wildly intrusive federal government from the top down.

Bennett then goes on to defend the actions of the federal government and, by default, Obama’s administration, explaining that Common Core is necessary because as a former Secretary of Education, he saw how State reports to the federal government on education was were pretty good until the administration of national standardized tests. In an inverse route, Bennett here admits that top-down federal control is the only standard to which he ascribes. Could it be that the federal government’s standardized tests are the problem? No way, according to Bennett.

In response to Abbott’s “strenuous disagreement” with Bennett’s statements, Bennett went on to say:

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You decided that Common Core wouldn’t be in Texas, and so it’s not in Texas, and Texas can teach math any way it wants, but what Texas can’t do is change the nature of mathematics and what mathematical reasoning and mathematical sequence becomes.

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This flourish by Bennett tells us that he is absolutely ignorant of what Common Core is doing to school districts nationwide. Teachers have already identified the changing nature of what he refers to as “mathematics and what mathematical reasoning and mathematical sequence becomes.” It is as if Bennett is unable to admit that a Department of Education under a liberal Democrat is not the same Department of Education under a conservative, but also, that anything coming from the federal government has to be good. The fact is, and Abbott rightly points this out, that the changes Bennett describes as not permitted by Texas are being administered, attached to funding, by the federal government.

[E, RALA]


(Another BigGovernment republican that should be flushed down the drain....)

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