Common Core advocates believe they’re losing the public relations war, while “Moms” are “winning,” writes Stephanie Simon on Politico. So pro-Core forces have decided to appeal to “hearts” rather than minds.
Or, as Neal McCluskey puts it, they’ll “stop being so darn principled.”
Rick Hess is dubious that Core advocates can stop patronizing their critics.
. . . each time the Common Core advocates say, “We get it now,” they make me think that a) they totally don’t get it, and b) they’re about to dig themselves into an even deeper hole.
Here’s his translation:
It’s tricky when we’re so obviously right.
You see, we really want to respect our opponents, but it’s hard when they’re such obvious nitwits.
The fact that they’re such nitwits has suckered us into just coolly sharing the evidence of our overwhelming rightness.
The problem is that all this evidence is too far over everyone’s heads, because they’re just not as sophisticated as we are.
So, we’ve decided we need to offer more sugar, candy, circuses, and heart-tugging appeals in order to really win this thing.
We’d thought push-polling and long-retired Republican governors would suffice, but now we’ve decided we need a national campaign of cute, smiling kids saying, “I WUV the Common Core!”
Core advocates haven’t engaged their “tempered and reasonable” skeptics, writes Hess. “I see this self-diagnosis as both insulting to us non-advocates and flat wrong.”
There are “legitimate concerns” about Common Core standards, writes Fordham’s Mike Petrilli. “I’ve never argued that decisions to adopt (or retain) the Common Core are a slam dunk or that you have to be done dumb or crazy to oppose them,” he writes.
Instead of “warm and fuzzy TV ads,” writes Petrilli, proponents should focus on “fixing an education system that continues to tell kids they are doing fine until they find themselves in remedial courses or without a decent paying job.”