Common Core on Trial

Do you support or oppose Common Core?  Do you know what it is?  If you’re like most Americans, you don’t know what it is or whether it is good or bad – or why it is controversial.

The developers of the federal Common Core education standards tell it this way:  “The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.”

An analysis of this month’s election results with an eye toward divining the future of Common Core reveals that the standards are starting to come under increased public scrutiny, and may be on shaky ground going forward.

Ohio voted essentially in favor of Common Core, but it was the outlier.  In Arizona, Diane Douglas ran on an explicitly anti-Common Core platform and won her race.  It is fair to call that race a referendum on Common Core, because, as Politico noted in advance of Election Day, “Her victory would be a huge win for the anti-Common Core movement.”  In Georgia, Richard Woods, a vocal opponent of Common Core, won his statewide race, though by less than a thousand votes.

Joy Pullmann, research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute, told Breitbart News, “Single-issue candidates—the state superintendents in Oklahoma and Arizona–were elected on straight anti-Common Core platforms.”

Indeed, opposition has been building since Common Core standards were accepted by the vast majority of states over the last few years.

The principles behind common core are two-fold: first, that a high school student should by the end of the class year have studied and mastered a certain set of information.  And second, that a student Richmond, Virginia. should have studied the same subjects and topics as a student of the same grade in Richmond, California.

The idea of a standard – some standard – makes sense because that which is measured is much more likely to be achieved rather than that which is not.  There is a reason people use a bathroom scale.It is the second part that has caused most of the problems. Common Core opponents do not approve of the top-down, centralized planning model of the curriculum, and seek local control over the education of their children based on the belief that DC or their state capitals are decidedly not the best places to look for guidance.  There is less opposition to any particular Common Core standard than to the idea that the standards themselves are mandated from on high, without accountability or responsiveness to parents or students.

Some opposition concerns itself with privacy issues like data mining students’ information, but fairly simple and robust protections for student information and data could be implemented to assuage these concerns.  The same cannot be said for the rest of the curriculum, which is in fact the essence of a top down command and control arrangement.  The standards are a creation of the National Governor’s Association, which owns the copyright and controls what is included or not.

The whole thing is tied up with federal money.  The reason 44 states quickly adopted Common Core standards was in large part to secure federal funds – $4.35 billion in cash was awarded to states that adopted college and career-ready standards for their students.  These “Race to the Top” grants came into existence as part of the 2009 stimulus bill.

The feds didn’t specify that the standards must be those of the Common Core, but states that adopted Common Core standards automatically qualified for the cash.  You can see the dates of adoption here, and see that most are in 2010.  Virginia was one of a handful of states that did not adopt Common Core.  It chose to continue its own SOL standards independent of Common Core and was denied federal funds.  At the time, Governor McDonnell said:

“The problem is that the way they have structured this program to mandate that we adopt a common core of standards to replace the Standards of Learning is unacceptable,” McDonnell told reporters in Richmond. “We can’t go back. We’ve been working on this for 15 years. Our standards are much superior. They’re well accepted. They’re validated. All the education leaders have a comfort level with those. So once again, a federal mandate to adopt a federal common core standard is just not something I can accept, nor can most of the education leaders in Virginia, nor can most of the legislators.”

While most people may not know about Common Core, some critical mass who do are passionately opposed to it.  Given what we know about how this administration deals in so many other areas, it is wise to be skeptical of federal “we know better than you” prescriptions about almost anything.  New York now has a “party” called the “Stop Common Core” designed to appeal to those who oppose it.  They effectively itemize their problems with Common Core and their plans to defeat its implementation.

Common Core combines two practices that are at once attractive and repellent.  We should support any group that strives to make sure Americans are well educated, and gain from their government mandated education valuable knowledge and critical thinking skills.  But after all we know about federal controls on education – massive spending increases have been accompanied by lower student achievement levels – why would we trust the national government to assume the level of federal control inherent in Common Core?

If the standards themselves are well done, the free market – the marketplace of ideas – will embrace them.  Or it won’t.  We would be better served by having Common Core supporters forced to compete to sell their vision just as the rest of us do, without federal handouts clouding the process.  And a growing movement around the country is busy spreading that message.