Arkansas Against Common Core – The Movement

Grace Lewis is a mother of four. She is a registered nurse from Mount Vernon, Arkansas. Grace started researching Common Core in 2013 after concerns about her son’s math homework. Grace Lewis and Patrick Richardson created Arkansas Against Common Core website. Arkansas Against Common Core is a grassroots movement for teachers, parent, and students. It is a local organization that doesn’t accept any political endorsement from other organization. It also doesn’t receive funding from others.

After in-depth research, Grace became shocked. She started to contact legislators on education committees. She wanted to do what she can do to stop Common Core. AACC aim to prevent The Common Core State Standards Initiative Reform. They do that by informing educators and parents about legislation, research, and activism. In 2015, AACC became part of Arkansans for Education Freedom, the parent organization.

So what is Common Core? Common Core is a set of national standards for English and math, and more subject areas are coming. It is going to transform how educators teach to children. Common Core supporters say that it will help kids prepare for college. By college, they mean community college and not the university. Supporters of Common Core also say that it will help children move from state to state. Still, according to the Bureau of Statistics, less than 2% of children moves during the school year.

So what is wrong with Common Core? In fact, non-educators paid for Common Core, and politicians crafted it behind closed doors. There is two main issue that concern Arkansas Against Common Core and they are. This is where it gets creepy.

1) The less of state and local control. Businesspeople and politicians backing up the government to manipulate the education system are unconstitutional. On many levels. Common Core creates consumer clones to serve big corporations. Local communities are a better judge of what is appropriate for teaching children. If the government took that power from Arkansans, it would not give it back. If Common Core did not work, the government would still evade responsibility.

2) The government monopoly of institutional power. It leads to less power for Arkansans. The government will have more authority to redefine academic standards and achievements. There will be no defense against that. The corporations will have direct access to children’s minds and conduct sociological exterminations. AEF points out to the radical agenda is already set in motion. AEF thinks it is a serious issue and a Trojan horse that the government is using to control the children.

There is a host other related matters as well. This movement is starting in Arkansas but quickly spreading to other cities like Austin and Houston. Among them is the “collection of unqualified people” who developed Common Core. The data mining, collecting data about students and their parents and selling them. To other governmental organization or even agencies in the private sector. Despite all that Arkansas Against Common Core is apolitical organization. It is not affiliated with the democratic party or the republican party. However, it is a member organization participating in teaching Arkansan teachers, parents, and students. Human life and the rule of law are the two defining values of AACC.