Common Core

In this video, Project Veritas journalists visit with America’s top textbook publishing companies, the moneymakers of Common Core, in an effort to expose how crony capitalism is taking over America’s educational system. Shockingly, our journalists caught a publishing executive mocking her own industry. Dianne Barrow, the West Coast Accounts Manager for Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt was caught on camera saying, “You don’t think that the educational publishing companies are in it for education do you? No. They’re in it for the money. The fact that they have to align the educational standards is what they have to do to sell the books.” Barrow reveals how the textbook industry prioritizes profits over students.“It’s a joke,” a Brooklyn, NY teacher confirmed in the undercover video. “It’s all a money game.”

After explaining how Common Core is overwhelmingly profit driven, Barrow went on to say, “I hate kids. I’m in it to sell books. Don’t even kid yourself for a heartbeat.”

This video shows an account executive at Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, the country’s second leading textbook publishing company and profiteer of Common Core, admitting that Common Core is never about the kids.

“It’s never about the kids,” is how Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt Strategic Account Manager Amelia Petties reveals how the textbook industry prioritizes profits over students, echoing the comments of her colleague Dianne Barrow who was featured in the first Project Veritas Common Core video of this series. Barrow’s employment with Houghton-Mifflin was terminated at the time of the release of that video.After admitting that Common Core isn’t about the educational welfare of children, Petties explained how lucrative Common Core has been for the textbook publishing companies, saying, “There’s always money in it.” Petties also suggested that changing the name of Common Core may be helpful in making textbook publishers more money by saying, “And slapping a new name on it, which in my case, I hope they do…Let’s do it…I can sell a shit ton of training around whatever you’re calling it.” “Common Core, just another fad. I mean it’s the same stuff we have been teaching forever, they just packaged it different. Sparked it up, put some glitter on it and it is now the Common Core,” stated Katrina Myers, a teacher in Klamath Falls, OR. “That’s another money making machine,” a Colorado teacher confirmed in the video, talking about Common Core.

The third video of the Project Veritas series on Common Core shows a former executive for Pearson, the country’s leading textbook publishing company, admitting that elements of Common Core intentionally push elitist indoctrination upon students. In the 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. “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,” revealed Koerber to undercover Project Veritas journalists.

“The dead white guys did not create this country” and “Damn the Second Amendment” are examples of other statements made by Koerber on hidden camera.

The fourth video of the Project Veritas series on Common Core shows a former executive for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the country’s second leading textbook publishing company, alleging that the textbook industry is more about politics and money than education. Again, Project Veritas undercover journalists used hidden video cameras to capture what textbook executives would never say in public. In the video video, Gilbert Garcia, a former executive who worked for Houghton Mifflin for 31 years, claims that the textbook industry is not based on merit and that politics often impact contractual procedures. “I’m going to share this, but it never came from me, the reality was that the evaluations that were done on all the supposed competitors, Pearson was not the real winner, yet Pearson got the contract,” said Garcia.

The contract Garcia is referring to is a 1.3 billion dollar deal to put Apple iPads loaded with curriculum into the Los Angeles public school system, a deal that was made in 2013. All of the top textbook publishers wanted to bid for that contract, but according to Garcia, the bidding was rigged, and Pearson, the country’s largest textbook publisher, received the contract. “You have a conflict of interest, you have an evaluation that led to the selection of a company that wasn’t even clearly the number one company,” said Garcia. When an undercover Project Veritas journalist asked Garcia why it was not known to the public that Pearson was not the number one publisher and why the news had not yet reported on the issue, Garcia said, “because it was an evaluation that was done behind closed doors…Maybe somebody hasn’t discovered it yet.”