When is a lie not a lie? When Ed Commissioner Pam Stewart tells it.

Pam Stewart is going around telling people that common core won’t cost anything additional. Well the Department of Education’s very own 100 million dollar budget for common core disputes that. But they aren’t the only one; even the pro Common Core Fordham institute says it is going to cost millions to implement.

Despite all this Politifact rated Pam Stewart’s statement as half true!

They wrote: Indeed, the Florida Department of Education created a spreadsheet in February detailing more than $100 million in Common Core projects the state had embarked upon.

The items included $24 million for the creation of student tutorial lessons, $4.7 million to generate math assessments and lesson study toolkits, and $25.5 million for a database of test questions for teachers to use. Funding for the vast majority of these projects came from a federal Race to the Top grant that Florida won, in part, for agreeing to adopt the Common Core.  

During the spring 2013 legislative session, Florida lawmakers noted that testing for the new standards would require computers, and they adopted a law barring the state from using Common Core-affiliated tests until all schools had the needed technology in place. The bill analysis noted that the State Board of Education requested $442 million for the improvements, a number later revised downward to $100 million.

So the Common Core price tag is well documented.

But that doesn’t make Stewart completely wrong.

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/26/pam-stewart/state-education-chief-says-theres-no-additional-co/

So despite all the evidence that it will cost more, Politifact basically agreed with Pam Stewart.

I get it some people like common core especially a lot of powerful people but shouldn’t we have the facts before we move forward?