For aficionados of sophistry and propaganda, Common Core presents a drunken orgy of fun.

 One of the most interesting specimens of strange language is the word Standard. Can anybody say what it means exactly?

Is it a goal? Is it a rule? Is it a law? Is it a means to get somewhere? Is it a norm?  And if nobody knows what it means, how can people have intelligent conversations about it?

 Note in particular, there is a very weird implication in Common Core propaganda that by the act of stating a standard, you make it happen. (That's the way children think, isn't it?) In the future, students will be college-ready and career-ready, apparently because Obama said they would be. 

All we know for sure is that our Education Establishment has created thousands of these "Standards." And in general, they are new and higher. Apparently that's a great accomplishment in itself. (It's as if a football coach announced that in the next season, all of his players would run the hundred in under nine seconds. How is that possible? Because that's the new standard!)

 I did a piece called "Arne Duncan and Common Core: dumb is as dumb does" about how Common Core continues to implode. And one big reason is that Arne Duncan succeeded in irritating half the mothers in America.  Who could've predicted that?

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 Arne Duncan became a good hook for trying to explain what new, higher standards are, and what they will do to us. 

 Arne Duncan and Common Core:  Dumb Is As Dumb Does

http://www.examiner.com/article/arne-duncan-and-common-core-dumb-is...