Problems with Common Core Standards

By the editors of Rethinking Schools

It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country. Although these “world-class” standards raise substantive questions about curriculum choices and instructional practices, such educational concerns are likely to prove less significant than the role the Common Core is playing in the larger landscape of our polarized education reform politics.

We know there have been many positive claims made for the Common Core:

• That it represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge.
• That it requires more progressive, student-centered teaching with strong elements of collaborative and reflective learning.
• That it equalizes the playing field by raising expectations for all children, especially those suffering the worst effects of the “drill and kill” test prep norms of the recent past.

We also know that many creative, heroic teachers are seeking ways to use this latest reform wave to serve their students well. Especially in the current interim between the roll-out of the standards and the arrival of the tests, some teachers have embraced the Common Core as an alternative to the scripted commercial formulas of recent experience, and are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core transition to do positive things in their classrooms.

We’d like to believe these claims and efforts can trump the more political uses of the Common Core project. But we can’t.

Foundations and school reform

One of the things the right wing does is keep organizing.  While we rest and recover from an election such as California Prop. 30, they are off on their next campaign.  They do this by having hundreds of advocates. So that while some recover, others launch their next campaign.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education’s annual conference was held  Nov 26-27   in Washington, D.C. The agenda hits most of the main policies former Gov. Jeb Bush has supported: How to make teachers more effective; school district accountability; charter school accountability; the parent trigger and funding; and what to expect from new Common Core assessments.

The agenda of the agenda of the right and of the Obama administration has focused on Common Core Standards.  To date there has been no evidence that common standards actually change what happens in classrooms.  This is the kind of reform that the well funded foundations like because they can go out and advocate and raise funds without having to get their hands dirty by talking with teachers, students or parents.

Major donors such as the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and others  are increasingly driving education agendas and that influence just continues to grow. These foundations  have no public accountability, but they  been successful in capturing the policy agenda from local school boards, state legislatures, in the press  and  in Congress  despite their lack of evidence of  success.