Common Core is now called WSLS (Washington State Learning Standards) – Smoke and Mirrors

For those of you who were around when Muhammad Ali was in his boxing prime you may remember his famous line “Float like a butterfly – sting like a Bee”.

Well, the State Superintendent, Randy Dorn, decided that Common Core’s negative image was hurting his efforts to impose Common Core Standards on an unwilling populace so what better way to confused the situation and attempt to deflect attention that to give it a new name and require that all school districts and administrators call it the Washington State Learning Standards (WSLS). When did this happen you ask? Well…apparently just recently. At a local school board meeting the Superintendent announced it but the school board members didn’t know.

We went back to the OSPI website to see if we can find any linkage. On this page: http://www.k12.wa.us/CurriculumInstruct/learningstandards.aspx we see reference to Common Core: Our learning standards incorporate the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics.

We can’t find anyplace where it was announced that Common Core is now WSLS. We haven’t been able to see who made the decision. We do know that the heat to throw Common Core out has been growing exponentially and that pushback on the high stakes testings (SBAC in Washington State) has grown into a movement. The State changed to the name in an effort to take control of the battle and inject a name that they consider less controversial.

No matter what you call a pile of xxxxx it’s still xxxxx. Common Core (we refuse to let them control the naming) is so fraught with problems, such a financial boondoggle, is so despised by parents and teachers (who are afraid to speak up for fear of loss of their jobs) they are trying to save their vision of the future. If you don’t know much about Common Core we offer a wide range of materials on this blog site.

Read, study and then join the battle. The future of our children and out very nation require that we not look the other way. We must regain local control of our schools to assure that our values, morality and other unique aspects of who we are continue to exist and be shared. If we allow this transfer of power to continue we will all be robots and forced to live in a state defined container.