Did some of the Republican presidential candidates just make a colossal error? Possibly, although this could actually be a calculated move.
A summit on education was announced this week with a few of the Republican presidential candidates participating. The summit will be moderated by Campbell Brown and include discussions on America’s education system. Unfortunately they skipped right over the grassroots activists IN NEW HAMPSHIRE who’ve been working on this issue for the past five years.
There is now a huge network of activists, parents and teachers across New Hampshire who are actively engaged in issues like Common Core, school choice, charter schools, etc. It would be easy for a national organization to collaborate with local leaders and activists. Unfortunately none of our local activists were contacted.
Some of the more prominent conservative and liberty organizations working on issues in education are well known throughout New Hampshire. Organizations like New Hampshire Families for Education, School Choice for New Hampshire, and Cornerstone Action have active leaders and were not contacted nor invited to help organize this event.
These organizations have worked with national organizations in the past in order to bring New Hampshire voters information on issues in education. Their goal has been to make sure the discussion is focused on engaging parents who have been negatively impacted by the federal reforms in education.
They’ve gained the trust and respect from parents across New Hampshire and have fought for parental rights, supporting local control in education, better academic standards, school choice, etc.
Can you imagine if these candidates were to come and discuss the importance of supporting the 2nd amendment and ignore all of the New Hampshire pro-second amendment organizations? One would have to wonder, why the snub?
Could it be that the moderator of this event, Campbell Brown, is an avid supporter of Common Core?
Campbell Brown is featured in this article by one of the nationally known activists, Mercedes Schneider. Schneider explains how Brown wants to explain to all of us what Common Core is all about. As if those of us who’ve actually had to deal with it in our schools remain uninformed. But isn’t that how our own Commissioner of Education and Chairman of the Board of Education have treated parents in the past?
We don’t know how great Common Core really is even though we are the ones directly impacted by the confusing math, flawed testing and data collection.
Don’t you just love how the elites who want to tell us how great Common Core is while their precious angels never have to deal with it in their private elite schools? Schneider provides a long list of elitists who force Common Core on our schools but wouldn’t touch it for their own kids. Campbell Brown is included in that list along with President Obama.
It looks like the BIGGEST Common Core supporters running for president will be at this summit, Governors Jeb Bush and John Kasich. Governors Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie and Scott Walker have Common Core baggage that cause many of us to question their capacity to make good decisions in education if they were to become president. Carly Fiorina would be wise to skip this summit,contact local grassroots organizations and start talking to the parents who want to be heard instead of TOLD that the garbage they are seeing is really good for their children.
Senator Rand Paul came to New Hampshire several months ago and met with the parents and teachers fighting Common Core in New Hampshire. Senator Rick Santorum has an education summit scheduled tomorrow in Manchester to do the same thing. Candidates like Senators Cruz and Rubio have said they’d be willing to work with New Hampshire activists and parents to engage in the same kind of discussion. In other words, they want to meet directly with the people who’ve been impacted by the federal reforms coming from D.C. into their child’s classroom.
Did the campaigns involved in this upcoming summit make a mistake by leaving out the grassroots organizations? We wondered about that, however it seems that if you want to control the message and make sure the tough questions are kept out of the discussion, what better way than to keep those closest to the problem away from the discussion.
We are a network of parents and teachers across New Hampshire fighting for a quality education for our children and local control in education. We expect parents who have to deal with these federal reforms to be the focus of any discussion on education. That’s been the priority from our New Hampshire activists. To exclude them from any discussion on education gives us a negative impression before it even begins.