Common Core foes shortsighted

"In fact, there was no federal government involvement in the development of the standards" says the NKy CEO Roundtable. That's accurate, but they leave out the part where the Obama administration subsequently wedged it into Race to the Top. Still, Kentucky should stay the course with Common Core, not waste teachers' efforts to date, and dump HB 215.

This from the Northern Kentucky CEO Roundtable in NKy.com:

Four years ago, Kentucky became a national leader in advancing educational excellence when it was the first state in the nation to adopt the Common Core State Standards designed to help ensure that our nation’s preschool through 12th-grade students are competitive at an international level. Growing out of the Common Core, the Kentucky Core Academic Standards focus heavily on critical thinking and problem solving, particularly in the areas of mathematics, language arts and science.

The result has been college and career readiness rates in Kentucky rose from 34 percent in 2010 to 54 percent in 2013. At a time when talent drives innovation and innovation drives global competitiveness, this progress should be hailed as a major step toward ensuring a competitive future for Kentucky and its people.

Still, there continues to be resistance to the Kentucky Core Academic Standards sufficient to cause a bill to be filed in the current legislative session that would repeal the standards. How shortsighted this would be!

The Northern Kentucky CEO Roundtable members collectively employ more than 60,000 people. We live daily with the challenge of finding workers who are prepared for the jobs we need to fill. We, along with every other employer in this region, make decisions on whether to expand based on our assessment of the workforce available to support it. Historically, our state and region have fallen short in ensuring rigorous internationally competitive academic standards. The Kentucky Core Academic Standards help ensure that we will never again fall short in our expectations of students and schools.

If the Kentucky Core Academic Standards are producing such strong results, why do pockets of resistance remain?

The most common criticism is that the standards represent the federal government’s attempt to impose a national curriculum when the constitution makes clear that education is a state responsibility. In fact, there was no federal government involvement in the development of the standards. The standards were developed by the states with leadership from university faculty, teachers and professional educators.

It’s been argued that the standards are not research-based and are not internationally benchmarked. In fact, the standards grow out of research and are strongly aligned with the performance of high-performing states and nations. It’s been argued that the standards represent a national curriculum that all schools must embrace. In fact, the standards are NOT a curriculum. They are performance outcomes that must be met but the curriculum used to achieve them is left up to local schools.

Some suggest that the standards aren’t high enough. In fact, the standards represent a minimum performance threshold. Schools can set standards that exceed the Kentucky Core Academic Standards, but not below.

Finally, some argue that the standards only include skills and not content knowledge. In fact, the standards have a rigorous definition of college and career ready that emphasizes content mastery as well as its application – for greater depth of knowledge.

New and more rigorous academic standards necessarily involve challenges related to implementation. Teachers must be educated to use the standards effectively. Students and parents must have time to adjust to the standards. Assessment tools must be aligned to accurately reflect the standards. And there must be opportunities built in to learn from implementation and continuously improve.

Kentucky developed and employed a model to phase-in the new standards and assessments without compromising precious time in the lives of our students. To use the challenges of implementation as a rationale for abandoning the standards themselves is shortsighted and dangerous.

The Northern Kentucky CEO Roundtable – a group of business, education and philanthropic leaders – wrote this statement on Kentucky’s Common Core education standards. The signers are: William P. Butler, chief executive officer and chairman, Corporex Cos.; John S. Dubis, president and chief executive officer, St. Elizabeth Healthcare; Kay Geiger, president, PNC Bank; Mike Goss, general manager, external affairs, Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing N.A., Inc.; James P. Henning, president, Ohio and Kentucky, Duke Energy; Timothy J. Maloney, president and chief executive officer, The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile Jr. U.S. Bank Foundation; Candace S. McGraw, chief executive officer, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport; Geoffrey S. Mearns, president, Northern Kentucky University; Kathryn E. Merchant, president and chief executive officer, The Greater Cincinnati Foundation; Robert J. Strub III, executive vice president, Citi; James C. Votruba, president emeritus, Northern Kentucky University, chair, Northern Kentucky CEO Roundtable; Robert W. Zapp, president and chief executive officer, The Bank of Kentucky Inc.