Standards

Some Common-Core Opponents Mark Nov. 18 as Stay-Away-From-School Day

By Andrew Ujifusa — November 11, 2013 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

We are fast approaching the holiday season, but there’s a special day marked on some calendars that comes earlier than Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or Christmas—some opponents of the Common Core State Standards have selected Nov. 18 as a day where parents should protest by keeping their children home, or at least away, from school.

The epicenter of this push against the common core is at the “Say No to Common Core” website, where blog author Janet Wilson puts the push behind the Nov. 18 boycott of schools in these terms: “Help us send a message to the federal government. We the people want evidence-based curriculum that is locally controlled and which does not require data mining our children. Instead of sending your children to school on November 18th, please educate them at home.”

The story has been picked up by the press in New York state, where one participating parent, Tim Karlik, compared the standards to the “affordable healthcare act,” a reference to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. (My colleague over at Politics K-12, Alyson Klein, recently highlighted political similarities between the government shutdown, which originated in anti-ACA agitation, and the common core.)

If you go to the Facebook page that also advertises Nov. 18 as a protest day against the standards, as of early on Nov. 11, about 4,030 people said they were “going” to or participating in the event. Does that mean the event isn’t attracting many parents and will fizzle out? Or will it spark further protests and more resistance to the common core?

Courtesy of The Post-Standard, here’s Danielle Karlik discussing the myriad reasons she’s keeping her children home from school that day that common-core defenders will vigorously object to. For example, Karlik says the standards impose “one-size-fits-all” learning onto students.

In other common core news, Illinois Sen. Kyle McCarter has introduced a Senate resolution seeking a delay of his state’s implementation of the common core (hat tip to Ken Libby). It has some similarities to the recent common-core pushback in Michigan. In addition to seeking a delay of the standards while a fiscal and policy review is conducted, the resolution would require the state Board of Education and legislators to come up with a “viable plan” to cover the costs associated with common-core implementation.

And in New York, Education Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch will host another forum in a series of public meetings on the common core on Nov. 12 at a high school on Long Island. I’ve covered King’s trouble with such common-core forums previously, but after briefly canceling the forums, King and the department put them back on their schedule.

A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.