Earlier this week, when I was sipping coffee and applying my makeup one morning, I was horrified to hear that the governor of Oregon had joined a pact to “help military children” transition between schools in different states by making enrollment and other service standards uniform across all states that have adopted the “Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children”. Why would I be horrified by the governor moving to support educational opportunity for military children? Because it is a lie. This is a gateway to passing Common Core in Oregon and the other remaining states who have not passed it yet.

If you Google the name of the pact and Common Core as keywords, you will see entry after entry which references the two initiatives as steps in the same process. Don’t be fooled, this is a ruse. Military children have access to some of the best schools in the nation, and in fact the world, via the DoDEA schools. These schools function by standards that would help solve many of the problems that plague some of the worst school districts in the nation-transient student population, 50% of the students receiving free or reduced price lunches via the Federal Lunch program, a high population of students whose parents have only a high school diploma-and yet they are more successful than most public schools at helping those children achieve graduation. In fact they boast a 97% graduation rate and most of their graduates go on to higher education.

The current Administration has simply latched on to a brilliant public relations whitewash for this issue to fool states into adopting these standards as a pathway to Common Core. I advise all parents to remember what we are learning about Obamacare and the promise of “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan“. This is the same thing, only it risks your children being adversely affected by it. This is worse than other educational trends like whole language or the dumbing down of math in America’s schools.

Not only is this dishonest, it may be in direct violation of the law. As an excerpt from the United States General Educational Provisions Act tells us the Federal Government has no right to assign curriculum standards that usurp the state’s educational standards:

“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.”

In short Common Core is a direct violation of the US Educational Code. So far Virginia, Texas, South Carolina and Indiana have all opted out of Common Core. I strongly urge parents in Oregon who are concerned about the passing of Common Core in Oregon to get active if they aren’t already. If we oppose this and are able to convince our representatives to back us up we stand a chance at saving our children from this educational train wreck.

Find your representative here and let them know what you think of Common Core as soon as possible. Otherwise we could see our pathetic graduation rate of 69% get worse, and how depressing would it be to know we as parents could have stopped it?