As Common Core champions like Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce continue to attack parents, teachers, and taxpayers for what they claim are “myths” spread about the centralized standards initiative, many parents across the nation are not convinced.

They are refusing to subject their children to the stress, pressure, and confusion associated with the Common Core by opting out of the assessments aligned with the standards, or by withdrawing them from school and choosing homeschooling instead.

WHNT 19 News in Alabama reports a growing number of families making the decision to withdraw their children from school in order to homeschool because of “confusion,” “chaos,” and stress related to the Common Core standards.

“It [Common Core] has caused chaos in our house, and it’s not worth it,” said Lori Peden, who has withdrawn two of her children from McBride Elementary in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. “The teachers are not comfortable teaching it. They’re frustrated. Parents are upset, kids are not making good grades. That’s what I’ve seen.”

Peden said she never had plans to homeschool her children, but did so after she observed her son struggling with Common Core math assignments in which he was required to find and learn up to half a dozen different pathways to the same final answer, an endeavor that created confusion and constant stress.

Read more from this story HERE.

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School district to mother: No Common Core opt-outs, let us humiliate your kids

By Robby Soave.

An Ohio school district told a worried parent that she wasn’t allowed to opt-out of Common Core testing for her kids–and then it forced the kids to be weighed and measured as part of body mass index testing.

The angry mother, Sarah Lewis, said her request to opt her kids out of any school-sponsored Common Core testing was vigorously rejected by Celina City SchoolsSuperintendent Jesse Steiner, according to The Heartland Institute.

“[O]n the recommendation of legal counsel, I am rejecting your request for your child to ‘Opt Out’ of any and all testing,” wrote Steiner in an email to Lewis. “Your child will be expected to follow the same educational procedures as the rest of the student body.”

Lewis opposes implementation of the Common Core standards, a controversial set of curriculum guidelines and standardized testing currently being implemented in most states.

Read more from this story HERE.

With the Common Core State Standards encountering remarkable political turbulence, you might think advocates would focus their energies on making their case and answering critics. After all, just yesterday Indiana became the first state to reverse its decision to adopt the Common Core. Instead, leading advocates seem intent on using junk polling to say, “There’s nothing to see here.”

Yesterday, the Collaborative for Student Success — a mishmash of substantial educational philanthropies — released a poll that purported to show that Americans love the Common Core even if they don’t know it. The new poll showed that two-thirds of respondents like the Common Core and that one-third “strongly” support it. This is pretty remarkable given that, just last summer, over 60 percent of respondents told Gallup they had never heard of the Common Core. What explains the remarkable shift? It turns out that the positive response was elicited after pollsters read just “a single sentence describing” the Common Core.

That “single sentence” explained: “To ensure that all students are prepared for success after graduation, the Common Core Standards establish a set of clear, consistent guidelines for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level across subjects.” (The astonishing thing is that 24 percent of respondents disapproved even after this explanation.) Fifty-seven percent of Republicans reportedly support the Common Core, thus described, and 60 percent of respondents would be more likely to vote for a pro–Common Core candidate.

Read more from this story HERE.