WHY Can't Students Read "Catcher in the Rye" in School? Meet David Coleman.

The big news in education last week was the reduction of fiction reading in schools thanks to Common Core State standards.  Many writers bemoaned the fact that Catcher in the Rye was being pulled from the approved list of literature by the centralized education system present in the United States.  So much for local control.

Under reported was the story on who is issuing these edicts on educational content and delivery.  It’s not Obama and it’s not Arne Duncan.  It’s David Coleman, who in our new centralized educational framework, should go by the title “Prince David Coleman” for being the lead architect in the crafting of the standards.  He has been endowed with special powers and seems to be untouchable in his pronouncements on how your local school district should teach and what it is allowed to teach.  Are we still in America?  Government for the people, by the people…or have we morphed into a public education system run by an elite?

Potter Williams Report has written an excellent piece on the man controlling your school in David Coleman, Architect of Common Core Standards, Replacing Classics with Propaganda:

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“It is rare in a working environment,” he’s argued, “that
someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I
need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

“As you grow up in this world you realize people really
don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” 

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Mr. Coleman seems to have a problem expressing himself without vulgarity in other venues as well.  Susan Ohanian was the first writer to note his continuing issue with crass language (warning: vulgar expressions ahead) in Standardized Testing, the Common Core, and Dropping the F-Bomb:

by David Coleman

EXCERPTS

. . .I think PARCC is doing some beautiful work. . . to design
assessments that seriously recognize two ideas: One is that assessment
is an extremely powerful signal for instruction but you gotta own it.
Cut the shit when you like “ooh we wrote this test and all these people
are doing test preparation. They shouldn’t be doing test prep; they
should look at the standards.”

I mean is it a perfect life? Fuck you. NO! I hate that
disingenuousness. If you put something on an assessment in my view you
are ethically obligated to take responsibility that kids will practice
it 100 times. . . .

These Standards say that all kids deserve and must read the good
stuff. We must stop watering down text. We must give demanding texts
at every level. . .. That’s true for English Language Learners. These
students have a right to rigor. . . .These core standards demand that
all students can and with adequate practice master greater rigor. . . .

Crack that whip!  Get those kids into shape!  Demand, demand, demand and give the kids the “right” to rigor.  What he doesn’t talk about is that he is the one to decide what is rigorous, what is not and what students must learn.  David Coleman is an unelected official  deciding what your local district MUST teach and how.

But don’t put ALL the blame on David Coleman.  Potter Williams details some of the politicians (Democrats and the Republicans) allowing and/or supporting Coleman to have this power:

•  Arne Duncan (US secretary of Education) 
• Jeb Bush (Former Republican governor of Florida)
• Mitch Daniels (Republican governor of Indiana)
• John Hickenlooper (Democratic governor of Colorado)

Others lavishing praise on Coleman include: 

• Kati Haycock (The Education Trust)
• Randi Weingarten (AFT President)
• Kaya Henderson (DC Public Schools Chancellor) 
• Bob Corcoran (GE Foundation President)  

The article chronicles Coleman’s connections with private industries profiting handsomely from the publicly funded mandates.  To understand how schools cannot now set their own curriculum (no matter what your school district/state legislation states) and why students won’t have the ability or time to read and discuss Catcher in the Rye in literature class, read how one man was able to manipulate standards/assessments with the help of politicians and corporations making handsome profits from the takeover of public education:

Whether Coleman sees himself as the schoolmaster of a one
world order education is unknown. What is apparent, however, is the horse has already
left the barn here in the United States. With the common core standards already
in place, conservatives and liberals alike have failed to vet transformers like
Coleman primarily due to Republican globalists who have been on board in the
transformation of public school education with their far left comrades since
the late 1980′s. 

Remember this:

The Common Core State (sic) Standards and Assessments are something you can’t use at a price you can’t afford.