This from Chester E. Finn at the
Thomas Fordham Foundation:
Though few Americans have ever heard of the “Common Core,” it’s causing a ruckus in education circles and turmoil
in the Republican Party. Prompted by tea-party activists, a couple of
talk-radio hosts and bloggers, a handful of disgruntled academics, and
several conservative think tanks, the Republican National Committee
recently adopted a resolution blasting
the Common Core as “an inappropriate overreach to standardize and
control the education of our children.” Several red states that previously adopted it for their schools are on the verge of backing out. Indiana is struggling over exit strategies.
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Public education is indisputably the responsibility of states—but that doesn't mean states can't work together. |
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What, you ask, is this all about?
Thirty years after a blue-ribbon panel declared the United States to be “a nation at risk”
due to the weak performance and shoddy results of our public education
system, one of the two great reforms to have enveloped that system is
the setting of explicit academic standards in core subjects, standards
that make clear what math youngsters should know by the end of fifth
grade, what reading-and-writing skills they must acquire by tenth grade,
and so on. (The other great reform: widespread acceptance of school
choice.)
Up to now, individual states have set their own academic standards.
Some did this well, but according to reviews undertaken by Fordham and
others, most stumbled badly, putting forth vague expectations that lack
content and rigor and often promote left-wing dogma. And even the good
ones differ so much from state to state that school and student
performance cannot be compared around the country, much less with other
lands.
Public education is indisputably the responsibility of
states—embedded deeply in their constitutions—but preparing young
Americans to succeed in a mobile society on a shrinking and more
competitive planet calls for some commonality of education expectations
across the land, expectations that, if met, truly prepare young people
for college and good jobs.
Many state leaders understand this and, beginning five years ago, the
National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School
Officers (to which most state superintendents belong) launched a
foundation-funded project called the Common Core State Standards
Initiative, which gave birth to a set of commendably strong standards
for English language arts and math from Kindergarten through high
school. Our reviewers found them superior to the academic expectations set by three-quarters of states—and essentially on par with the rest.
But would states actually embrace them in place of their own? This
was—and remains—totally voluntary, but decisions grew more complicated
when the Obama administration started pushing states toward such
adoptions by jawboning, hectoring, and luring them with dollars and
regulatory waivers.
Whether it was the standards’ intrinsic merit, administration
pressure, or the potential advantages of commonality—not just
comparability but also cheaper textbooks and tests that need not be
tailored to each state’s specifications—forty-five states plus D.C.,
several territories, and the Pentagon’s school network signed on. (Texas
and Virginia are the big exceptions.) The top-priority education
initiative in most of those places today is preparing teachers, parents,
and others for these demanding standards—and for the likelihood that
scores will plummet on the tougher tests now under development.
Then came the backlash. Some arose on the left from foes of testing
and teacher groups wary of being evaluated against sterner criteria.
Some arose from parents and educators fretful that heavier emphasis on
English language arts and math will eclipse music, art, and the rest of a
balanced curriculum.
The heavy artillery, however, came from the right. In true tea-party
style, the Common Core was presented as a federal plot—worse, an Obama
plot, in cahoots with the Gates Foundation, maybe even the United
Nations—to take over American schools, end local control, undermine
state sovereignty, and abolish school choice. Some decried the Common
Core as a lowering of standards because, for example, it doesn’t mandate algebra in eighth grade. (Never mind that few eighth graders study real algebra today.)
Others prophesied that Jane Austen and Mark Twain would be replaced by
close study of auto-repair manuals. (The list of recommended readings
that accompanies the Common Core is excellent—but bad choices by
teachers or curriculum directors can subvert any standards.)
Many respected conservatives back the Common Core, including such scarred veterans of the education-reform wars as Jeb Bush, Bill Bennett,
Chris Christie, Rod Paige, and Mitch Daniels. They understand that
academic standards are just the beginning, describing a destination but
not how to get there. They understand, too, that a destination worth
reaching beats aimless wandering—and that a big modern country is better
off if it knows how all its kids and schools are doing against a
rigorous set of common expectations. As good conservatives, they realize
that the Common Core in the long run should save dollars, enhance
accountability, hasten development of powerful instructional
technologies, strengthen American competitiveness, give a boost to the
country’s shared civic culture, and (by supplying parents with better
information about school performance) advance school choice.
They also recognize, however, that the Common Core is voluntary and
that states unserious about implementing it are better off not
pretending to embrace it.
Some day, we’ll know whether schools and students in the Common Core
states do better than those in places that opt to go it alone. It’s hard
to imagine that they’ll do worse.
Education reform is hard. Admiral Rickover once compared it to
“moving a graveyard.” Standards-setting is just part of it—and common
standards aren’t inherently better.
(Newly released standards for
science appear to have serious shortcomings.)
But when a group of state leaders, many of them Republicans, can come
together to set expectations for the curricular core that surpass what
most of them set on their own, conservatives ought to applaud, not lash
out.
3 comments:
Prof. Day,
You are so good at tracking down linkages between business and education interests, have you checked for any connection between the Gates Foundation and Fordham?
My research is out of date so this should be taken as a very low estimate...but in the mid 2000s through 2009 Gates had given Fordham at least $2.2 million.
It's almost safe to assume that Gates has funded anyone willing to call themselves reformers to some degree or another.
Over the weekend, for example, Commissioner Terry Holliday and FCPS Superintendent Tom Shelton were in Sydney, Australia at the Gates-funded Global Education Leadership Program conference at the Shangri-La Hotel.
:)
Gotta love irony of the hotel name.
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