Common Core Supporters Say Standard Improves on the Status Quo

Public schools do suck

NORMAL — Like a baseball bat to the side of the head, the latest sales pitch for Common Core in Illinois is blunt and painful.

Half the students in Illinois high schools cannot read, write or add at a high school level.

"If we, as a business, made washing machines where 50 percent of them needed the motor replaced by the consumer … that warranty cost would put us out of business," Bob Cocoran, chairman of the GE Foundation, told a crowd of Common Core supporters in central Illinois Wednesday.

Cocoran said a 50 percent failure rate is unacceptable.