(Sioux City, IA) United States Senate candidate Sam Clovis took on the issue of Common Core ahead of a forum on the perils of one-size-fits-all national education standards.
“One of the most important tenets of a conservative platform is parental local control of education. Unelected national bodies establishing education policy for the entire country is the opposite of local control,” said Clovis. “These entities pay no price for being wrong yet we are subject to their mandated experiments.”
Over 40 states, including Iowa, accepted Common Core standards when the federal government offered grants and No Child Left Behind waivers as part of President Obama’s Race To The Top stimulus spending. He continued by saying that the outlandish expense alone is reason to oppose this federal overreach in education. “Establishing national standards, employing unproven testing, and administering suspicious assessment processes while conducting privacy-invading data mining runs counter to common sense governance and proven conservative principles.”
Watch Sam explain why these standards will fail to improve education.
Sam Clovis holds a Masters in Business Administration in Management and a Doctorate in Public Administration. He is currently a tenured full professor at a private liberal arts college in northwest Iowa. He served in the United States Air Force for 25 years and still provides leadership to defense and homeland security institutions. He lives in Hinton, IA with his wife Charlotte and stepson Khan. More information on the candidate and his campaign may be obtained at www.samclovis.com.
Editor’s note: the Common Core State Standards originated with the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. While these did not originate in the U.S. Department of Education as Sam suggests in the video the Department has been highly involved in funding the assessment consortiums (Smarter Balanced and PARCC) and pushing the implementation of these standards through the Race to the Top program and No Child Left Behind waivers.