A former educational textbook publishing executive apparently upset about Texas rejecting Common Core seems to slam insufficiently progressive Republicans and conservatives in the latest hidden camera sting from muckraker James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas crew.
In a previous undercover video for which this clip is a follow up, a now-fired accounts manager from another educational publisher claimed that Common Core is “ all about the money ” in the context of selling books aligned with the Common Core standards and added that she hated kids and that only “old white men” oppose Common Core, comments she subsequently disavowed.
The race card also shows up in the new O’Keefe video.
The K-12 Common Core educational standards are in use in about 40 states. Most GOP presidential candidates oppose the federal one-size-fits-all criteria, with the exception of Jeb Bush, and have vowed to eliminate them in favor of local curriculum control. Their Democrat counterparts support Common Core. Front-runner Donald Trump has described Common Core as a disaster.
In the last GOP debate, Chris Christie insisted New Jersey has eliminated Common Core, but reportedly most of its standards have been retained under another name.
Chris Christie said New Jersey has “eliminated” Common Core. It hasn’t. https://t.co/853Rzfj0om pic.twitter.com/cZkOeTvaCT
— Vox (@voxdotcom) January 15, 2016
“In James O’Keefe’s latest video, Kimberly Koerber, a former executive for Pearson who now works for National Geographic, was caught on camera justifying the Common Core curriculum on the grounds of anti-American and unconstitutional values,” the Project Veritas website claims.
The full, raw video has yet to be released so watch the footage embedded below and draw your own conclusions about its validity.
Addressing the criticism that Common Core has a liberal bias, Koerber explains that “So, I think the progressive bias is the more educated you are, the better you are, and the conservative bias is the less [the kids] know the better they are going to be.”
In the context of opposition to Common Core, if this video is accurate, the former Pearson exec also weighed in on Fox News and on America’s Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution, a.k.a. dead white guys.
“People that are not educated, Fox TV viewers think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that’s why they are against it. They don’t know anything about it. They think it’s liberal so they’re against it. That’s what I think it is. It’s a knee- jerk reaction. My mother, oh my God, she’s a Fox person. If I could remove Fox from my television set, I would…”
“I did a big presentation…for AP US History and the AP US History agenda was set, until Texas got upset about it and they wanted to have their founders — they wanted founders in it. And it’s like – come on. The dead white guys did not create this country. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of people…you need to talk about them too. But they want to talk about those dead white guys.”
In another apparent reference to Texas, the woman complained that Common Core opponents only want to teach part of the Constitution. “But yet they don’t want to teach all of it. Damn the Second Amendment. I don’t think personal handguns need to be on anyone except the government, the police. What is the purpose of having a gun?”
She also seemed to suggest that a school district is compelled to buy new books each time there is a change in Common Core curriculum.
In another new video, an account executive with Hougton-Mifflin who sells Common Core textbooks seems to reaffirm that “It’s not about the kids…it’s never about the kids.” She also allegedly revealed publishers have repurposed existing content and slapped the Common Corename on it to increase profits.
Although the controversial O’Keefe has plenty of detractors for this particular brand of journalism, his Project Veritas team, which mostly specializes in undercover videos, has done its share of investigative reporting into corrupt or fraudulent government practices (or rampant political correctness on campus), investigative work which seems to be generally falling out of favor in the mainstream or legacy media. News-gathering organizations used to regularly employ techniques such as hidden camera research in their reportage.
You may recall that a prior O’Keefe video showed someone wearing an Osama bin Laden mask could walk across the southern border undetected, and also how a man wearing an ISIS uniform could cross by boat from Canada to the U.S. without being stopped.
In 2010, the conservative activist pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for a failed stunt at ex-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans.
Separately, Pearson announced that it is eliminating 4,000 jobs worldwide because of soft profits from educational-testing activities. According to Slate , this is partially the result of 20 states dropping out of Common Core-aligned testing in elementary and middle schools.
According to Common Core foe The Federalist , national curriculum standards “benefit big business at the expense of schools, teachers, parents, and children.”
Is Common Core being used in the school district in your area?
[Photo by Sue Ogrocki/AP]