The Insulting Move State Lawmakers Made to Mock Common Core Opponents

Lawmakers in Missouri added $8 to the state's proposed budget for tin foil hats for opponents of Common Core.

An anti-Common Core rally at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014.  (AP/Rogelio V. Solis)

The mocking amendment was proposed by state House education funding committee chairman Rep. Mike Lair, a Republican who is also a retired teacher, the Associated Press reported.

The provision cleared the funding panel in a bipartisan vote, and the budget will now go to the full House for a vote.

The amendment specified that the $8 would fund “two rolls of high density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind reading and control technology.”

The Common Core K-12 education standards for math and English were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Obama administration also supports the standards, which have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.

As Missouri legislators engage in mockery, Common Core opposition has expanded well beyond regular political boundaries.

On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced a resolution with eight other Senate Republican co-sponsors contending that the carrot-and-stick approach used by the Department of Education for federal grants is making Common Core a de facto national curriculum. A similar House resolution has more than 40 co-sponsors.

(Source: Shutterstock)

On Wednesday, the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, expressed strong criticism of Common Core.

“I am sure it won’t come as a surprise to hear that in far too many states, implementation has been completely botched,” president Dennis Van Roekel wrote in a letter to the union's 3 million members.

“Seven of ten teachers believe that implementation of the standards is going poorly in their schools," he wrote. "Worse yet, teachers report that there has been little to no attempt to allow educators to share what’s needed to get [Common Core State Standards] implementation right. In fact, two-thirds of all teachers report that they have not even been asked how to implement these new standards in their classrooms.”

Note: You can hear Doc Thompson and his interview with Heidi Huber from Ohioans Against Common Core and her overview of why she's against the program, courtesy of TheBlaze Radio.

(H/T Kansas City Star)