Perdido Street School -

Former NY Times editor and current columnist Bill Keller attacked opponents to the Common Core standards as a “very loud, often paranoid, if-that-Kenyan-socialist-in-the-White-House-is-for-it-I’m-against-it crowd.” 

Keller acknowledges that there are opponents to the standards on the left “but overwhelmingly the animus against the standards comes from the right.”

While the Michelle Malkin-Glenn Beck contingent against Common Core may be the loudest opposition group to the Core, we’ve begun to see opposition to the Common Core rise up from people of all political backgrounds.

Just this past week, more than 1,500 parents, students and teachers protested the Common Core in Port Jefferson, with nary a “loud, often paranoid, if-that-Kenyan-socialist-in-the-White-House-is-for-it-I’m-against-it-type” in the crowd.

Indeed, even in the comments to Keller’s Times column, people make reasoned arguments criticizing the Core.

Here is one:

I’m all for a set of standards. They are necessary and proper. But setting standards alone is pointless unless there is a more equitable way to fund local school districts, so that all kids get at least a fighting chance. At this point, poor districts stay poor and rich districts keep adding more tennis courts. In fact, to be more fair, it’s probably the case that the schools in areas of great and persistent poverty should get a greater share of school funding, because those kids, by dint of dysfunctional families, drug use, a social fabric which eschews school and education — and other factors, need extra help.

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