Bill Gates Loves Common Core for Your Kids, BUT NOT HIS

Photo Credit: Getty / Alex Wong

Photo Credit: Getty / Alex Wong

By Eric Owens. Billionaire software tycoon Bill Gates has poured millions of dollars into efforts to develop and promote the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of K-12 math and language arts curriculum benchmarks and high-stakes standardized tests now being implemented in 46 states.

Strangely enough, though, Common Core isn’t quite good enough for Gates and his wife, Melinda, when it comes to the education of their own three children.

Diane Ravitch, a self-styled education policy iconoclast who tends to oppose Common Core (and charter schools, and much else), noted this irony on her blog earlier this week.

The children of Bill and Melinda Gates – Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe – have attended Lakeside School, Seattle’s most elite, fancypants private school.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Common Core debate likely to heat up again

By Mike Wiser.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had just left the stage at the Des Moines Marriott and walked into a gaggle of reporters.

Cruz had been speaking to an assembly of home-school families. He told them he believed in religious freedom and educational choice. With the reporters, he added a finer point.

“I emphatically oppose the Common Core,” he said.

He’s not alone.

In statehouses across the country, legislators are debating laws to delay, or eliminate, parts of the Common Core standards for reasons ranging from curriculum control to suspicion over government data collection.

Read more from this story HERE.