Like so many education reform initiatives that seem to arise out of nowhere, the Common Core State Standards is another of these sweeping phantom movements that have gotten their impetus from a cadre of invisible human beings endowed with inordinate power to impose their ideas on everybody.

One of the best-kept secrets in American education is that the 26 letters of the English alphabet stand for only 44 sounds. Learning to read with phonics programs helps students recognize the different letter combinations that form the various sounds.

According to a cover story in Newsweek of September 17, 2012, there is a "college bubble" much like the housing bubble; one that defies economic reality. The opening paragraph states: Mythomania about college has turned getting a degree into an American neurosis.  It’s sending parents to the poorhouse and saddling students with a backpack full of debt that doesn’t even guarantee a good job in the end.

Although not much has been said about education in the presidential campaign, the candidates have prepared their answers on the issue in case they’re asked the usual question: How are you going to improve education? That’s the question everyone running for office is asked, from president to dog catcher. And the answer is always: I favor improving education by paying teachers more, reducing class size, and spending more money. It’s a litany heard from coast to coast in every election cycle. 

Education is the orphan issue of this presidential campaign, because the subject is too complex and too volatile to be decently handled in the kind of debates that Gov. Romney and President Obama have been engaged in. There is simply not enough time to do the subject justice. Besides, both Romney and Obama believe that the federal government has a role to play in public education: Obama a lot more; Romney a little less, but not enough difference to make it a hot issue.

The reason early Americans became the most literate people on earth is because of their profound dependence on the principles and laws of the Bible as their guide for building a godly civilization in the North American wilderness.

The ignorance of the professionals is what has made a total sham of American public education. Their ignorance of our educational history is appalling. Dozens of books have been written by conservatives on the failures of progressive education, yet the professional educators simply will not read them because they don’t comply with their political agenda.

The Constitution does not give the minority the right to deprive the majority of their Constitutional rights, even when it comes to exercise of religion.

When public schools strip children of their belief in God — something the kids are apparently born with — it apparently causes psychological problems, so kids should be taught in godly schools.

According to the Associated Press of May 25, 2012, SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were “the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest since 1955." The cause of this precipitous decline? Whole language instruction. Will the institution of Common Core Standards lift us out of this pit of embarrassing failure? Will it finally relegate whole language to the dumpster of educational quackery? No, the Common Core Standards in reading are a fraud that will cost billions of dollars to implement and will not solve the reading problem.