Dr. Peg Luksik, a former Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate and longtime educator, fears for the future of this nation's children.

She says Common Core, America's new educational standards for kindergarten through grade 12, will put a "mandate on achievement" and effectively dumb down this country.

In an effort to galvanize awareness of this national curriculum, the Lehigh Valley Tea Party recently sponsored a presentation by Luksik at Lehigh Lodge in Macungie, where local residents heard her qualms about Common Core.

The goal of Common Core, according to its mission statement, is to prepare students to "be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy."

Furthermore, its mission is to "provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them."

One of Luksik's primary issues with Common Core is the curricula.

Under these standards, primary school students will not need to learn addition until fourth grade, multiplication until fifth and sixth grade, and Algebra 1 would be the minimum mathematical requirement for graduating high school.

Dr. Luksik said one of the Common Core training seminars for Pennsylvanian teachers, many math teachers, were absolutely bewildered as to why the standard was set so low. They were told students going into service jobs don't need more than Algebra 1.

"When did the client of education change?" Dr. Luksik wondered. "I thought the client was the children."

She then mentioned a statement made at a recent House Education Committee hearing on Common Core, where someone compared the standards to hamburgers.

"If you go into a McDonald's in Erie or one in Philadelphia, the hamburgers are the same," Dr. Luksik said. "So we should have the children, whether they are in Erie or Philadelphia, be the same. Nobody would consider the hamburger the client of McDonald's.

"We do something to the hamburger for the client. Why would we be comparing the child to the product of education?

"And, to continue the analogy, what is the reason all the hamburgers taste the same? They got the same recipe. That's the same curriculum, isn't it?

"Children don't come in one size fits all, you can't make them all the same, they're not like hamburgers. A system that attempts to do that is flawed at its base."

Luksik also had problems with Common Core's English curriculum.

At the training seminar, she learned the balance in the English curriculum would become increasingly less literary under the new standards.

By 12th grade, the focus will be 70 percent informational and 30 percent literary.

"Western civilization is transmitted through literature," Luksik said.

"Abraham Lincoln once introduced Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," as the woman who started the Civil War because she put a face on the issue of slavery. Everyone knows who Simon Legree is except our kids."

Luksik presented Common Core's information-emphasized guide to creating text-dependent question for analytical reading, which used the Gettysburg Address as an example.

According to the guide, a teacher should stray away from posing such questions as why the North fought the Civil War and why equality is important.

"You're only supposed to talk about the words of the Gettysburg Address, which is kind of ironic because the Gettysburg Address says 'The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.' And this process turns that on its head," Luksik said.

To illustrate what adopting Common Core standards will ultimately do to American education, Luksik asked her audience to stand.

"This is vocal performance," she explained as everyone shuffled upward.

"When you can meet the standard, you can sit down, but you cannot sit down until you meet my standard: Luciano Pavarotti, considered the greatest tenor of the 20th century.

"Anyone who can sing like him can sit down."

Echoes of laughter bounced around the room as the seats remained empty.

Luksik then named decreasingly skillful levels of vocal performance ranging from "soloist with the New York Metropolitan Opera" to "sings in the shower and enjoys it" and all the way down to "can't carry a tune in a bucket" and "can't find the bucket."

"I am mandating achievement," Luksik explained. "Every child will achieve. Where do I have to put the line?

"Where did most of you sit down? Sings in the shower and enjoys it.

"I am a teacher in a classroom and I am accountable to make sure every student reaches the mandatory achievement level.

"Where am I going to spend all my time? With Mr. and Mrs. Can't Find the Bucket out there to get them up to 'sings in the shower and enjoys it.'

"But what about Mrs. New York Met? Well, they're just lost. When you try to mandate achievement, the first thing that happens is you have to lower the scale."

However, there is still the chance that students won't be able to reach the mandated level of achievement. If that happens, Common Core will allow students to complete a project instead.

If that is not possible, then according to Luksik, superintendents can jsay an underachieving student passed anyway.

"Does anybody wonder why education is getting worse?" Luksik asked. "Because we've been attempting to mandate achievement now for a number of years.

"You can't mandate achievement. Why would we think that every child could learn the same thing? The system is based on an insane proposition and now what you have is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."

After her talk, Luksik answered questions from concerned parents, many of whom were wondering what they could do to convince school board members Common Core is a problem.

"Sometimes you just have to let reality rear its ugly head," she replied.

"In some cases, no matter what you say ahead of time, people don't want to believe it until it hits them in the face. All you can do is keep putting the facts out there.

"In the end, what's real is what's real and people will see that as this continues to move forward."

Luksik suggested parents be as involved in their children's lives as they can and supplement with curriculum that is not Common Core-compliant.

She also implored teachers to do everything in their power to protect students from Common Core.

"Make them fire you," she said. "But stay as long as you can."

To close out the evening, Luksik encouraged her audience to persevere in their fight against Common Core.

She recalled her successful battle against outcome-based education in the 1990s and said the reason for her victory boiled down to citizens making calls to their state legislators and senators.

"I've actually had issues I was working on debated on the floor of the Pennsylvania House when one of the representatives stood up on the floor in the debate and said, 'Would you give her whatever she wants? My office is doing nothing but answering phone calls from people who agree with her and we can't get anything else done.'

"The public actually can change policy."