Seth Masket considers the latest debate roiling the education world:
By now, you’ve probably heard of the Common Core State Standards. They are a set of skills expectations for students that have been adopted by 45 states plus the District of Columbia. They require that students be broadly competent in mathematics and literacy and know how to do things like critically read a text, argue and defend a point of view, interpret data, etc. – all things that we’d consider pretty useful for students entering college or the work world. The Common Core itself contains no specific prescriptions for content or curriculum, just the requirement that students learn these vital skills.
But that’s not at all what you’ll hear about it in the conservative media. For them, not only is the Common Core a massive federal intrusion into state and local education policy (a debatable point, but one roughly grounded in reality), but it’s a primary tool of President Obama and the Left (and possibly the United Nations) to fundamentally transform education, to undermine the authority of religion and parents, to track the location and behavior of children who’ve committed thought crimes (perhaps using iris scans), and to essentially impose collectivism upon America. As Glenn Beck sums up, “This is like some really spooky, sci-fi, Gattaca kind of thing.”
Peter Wood’s criticisms are more reality-based. He argues that Common Core “set a ceiling on the academic preparation of most students”:
None of this might matter if the Common Core were just a baseline and students and schools could easily move above it if they wished to. The trouble is that the Common Core has been designed to be a sticky baseline. It is hard for schools to rise above it.
There are two reasons for that. First, it uses up most of the time in a K-12 curriculum, leaving little room for anything else. Second, the states that were leveraged into it via Obama’s “Race to the Top” agreed that students who graduate from high school with a Common Core education and are admitted to public colleges and universities will automatically be entered into “credit-bearing courses.” This is tricky. Essentially what it means is that public colleges will have to adjust their curricula down to the level of knowledge and skill that the Common Core mandates. And that in turn means that most schools will have little reason to offer anything beyond the Common Core, even if they can. In this way, the Common Core floor becomes very much a ceiling, too.
Neal McCluskey isn’t thrilled about Common Core’s relationship with the SAT:
What’s the connection between the Core and the SAT? A big one: David Coleman, who is both a chief architect of the Core and president of the SAT-owning College Board. Coleman announced when he took over the Board that he would align the SAT with the Core, and it was clear in the Board’s SAT press release that that is what’s happening. Employing Common Core code, the Board announced that the new SAT will focus on “college and career readiness.” Why is this potentially bad news for Core supporters? Because the SAT changes are widely being criticized as dumbing-down the test – good-bye words like “prevaricator,” hello toughies like “synthesis” – and that may drive attention to people who are questioning the quality of the Core.
And longtime standards proponent Diane Ravitch recently leveled her own criticisms:
The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.
Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots. Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences
She made similar points in new interview:
[Common Core standards] haven’t been tried anywhere, they’ve been tested — and we know that where they’re tested, they cause massive failure. So I would say we need to have more time before we can reach any judgment that they have some miracle cure embedded in them.
I know, and a lot of teachers know, they’re totally inappropriate for children in kindergarten, first grade, second grade and third grade, because when they were written there was no one on various writing committees who was an expert in early childhood education… They’re also totally inappropriate for children who have disabilities — they can’t keep up. There’s an assumption in the Common Core that if you teach everybody the same thing, everybody will progress at the same speed. And that’s not human nature. It doesn’t work that way.
The Dish 