After lambasting Common Core for ruining his kids’ education, Emmy Award-winning comedian Louis C.K. is taking flak from a Core-supporter at Newsweek.
In an article titled, “Sorry, Louis C.K., but You’re Wrong About Common Core,” Alexander Nazaryan took the comedian to task for using his bully pulpit to “malign an earnest effort at education reform.”
Louis C.K.’s anti-Common Core message was delivered via a series of Tweets on Monday, in which he blamed the new national education standards for making math learning more difficult for his kids. (RELATED: Louis C.K. Says Common Core Has Ruined Math For Kids: ‘It Makes Them Cry’)
My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
Louis C.K.’s two children attend school in New York City.
He also tweeted screenshots of several incomprehensible homework problems assigned to his third grade daughter. Core-aligned standardized testing wastes time and energy and stresses out students, he wrote.
But it’s changed in recent years. It’s all about these tests. It feels like a dark time. And nothing is going in anymore.
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
But Nazaryan derided Louis C.K.’s concerns as angry, counter-productive rants that would undermined the standards — and thus hurt kids.
The worst part, according to Nazaryan? Since Louis C.K. is not a conspiracy theorist, he can’t easily be written off:
But what’s dismaying about Louis C.K.’s anti-Common Core rant is that he is neither a shill for the unions nor a far-left conspiracy theorist who thinks that Education Secretary Arne Duncan (and perhaps the president himself!) is in the pocket of Pearson and the Princeton Review. He is, instead, a New York City public school parent who has the ears and eyeballs of millions across the nation, not to mention his 3 million Twitter followers. And he has used that bully pulpit to malign an earnest effort at education reform, one that is far too young to be judged so harshly.
Nazaryan also bemoaned the consensus among conservatives, liberals, lawmakers of both parties, parents, teachers and crazy people that Common Core is not a worthwhile reform:
The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of those rare reforms that is loathed by right and left alike: by conservatives for the wielding of a federal diktat (more than 40 states have adopted the Common Core) that will surely spread to gun ownership next; by liberals for seemingly diminishing the teaching profession by emphasizing data. The Common Core is especially loathed by the teachers’ unions, which fear that educators will be judged (and fired) if their students don’t perform adequately on the more difficult standardized tests that are a crucial component of Common Core. There are also conspiracy theorists who deem the whole project a massive payout to test maker Pearson.
Following the publication of Nazaryan’s article, he engaged in a long back-and-forth Twitter feud with Louis C.K., according to Twitchy.
@alexnazaryan the things you say about me are shallow and mean but you posed in front of some books for your pic & thus sound smart.
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) May 1, 2014
Louis C.K. asked his Twitter followers not to attack Nazaryan, however.