Letters: Voice of the Community

DUMBING DOWN

Some people opposed to Common Core see the standards as dumbing down American children. I believe the dumbing down started long ago and can be seen no more clearly today than in the capitols of states that accepted Common Core and the administrative offices of schools that did not protest.

We voters hope we elect people who will look out for our interests and we hope school boards will watch administrators to see that they are looking out for the students.

Who was doing the watching when Nevada got caught up in the Common Core fiasco?

Here was a program that was thrown together in relative secrecy by un-elected and unaccountable members of non-governmental organizations. There was no input from parents, teachers or state officials. There was no consulting with experts in the field except for one in English and one in mathematics, both of whom later refused to approve the final product. And there was no testing of that product.

The testing is going on now in schools around the country and it has children in New York state vomiting on their test papers out of frustration, and mothers in Oregon taking their children out of math classes to be home-schooled. And it has something like 16 of the original 45 states that signed up for the program considering action to restrict Common Core while it is looked into more thoroughly.

It is high time for Nevada to join them. It is past time that we stopped yielding to federal mandates, extortion and bribery. A prudent man would question anything put forward by the current administration.

Jim Falk

Churchill County