Common Core is common sense
In 2010, a who’s who of American educators and politicians joined forces to spearhead a national initiative with wide appeal and few if any critics. It was called the Common Core.
The pols and educators agreed: Too many U.S. students breezed through weak state achievement tests, only to falter against tougher national and international assessments. Many students who reached college needed intensive tutoring.
The prescription: Create “a common set of high expectations for students across the country.” State school superintendents, other education leaders and teachers nationwide would write tough national math and English standards.
The CEO of the National Parent-Teacher Association endorsed Common Core. So did the American Federation of Teachers. The National Education Association. Several governors. A top exec at consulting giant Accenture. The CEO of Intel. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. The Carnegie Foundation. The National Center for Learning Disabilities. The National Association of State Boards of Education. The 2010 Teacher of the Year.
Eventually, 45 states embraced the Core. Over the last four years, however, that unified front has crumbled.
First, some Republicans defected after the Obama administration embraced the Common Core as part of its 2009 Race to the Top education sweepstakes. The political calculus: Obama is for it so we’re against it.
Indiana, after embracing the Common Core, recently scrapped the standards in favor of those “written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers,” Gov. Mike Pence said.
Other states are in various stages of revolt against the Common Core.
Now some teachers unions have joined that chorus. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis calls the core “an overreach of federal power into personal privacy as well as into state educational autonomy.” She and other union critics say that the Core stifles “creativity in the classroom” — and that tougher tests tied to the standards shouldn’t be used to evaluate teachers.
Translated: Union leaders fear that more students will fail to clear the new statewide tests, and that their members will shoulder a huge share of the blame.
Reality: The Common Core does not dictate how teachers teach, or set a rigid curriculum for students. The curriculum remains firmly in the hands of teachers, principals and local school boards.
“The Common Core tells me what my students should master before they leave my classroom — it is the destination,” Pam Reilly, the 2014 Illinois Teacher of the Year, tells us. “The journey of teaching to reach that destination is up to me.” As it should be.
Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, one of the original Core backers in 2010, summarized the backlash: “There is a great deal of paranoia in the country today,” he told The New York Times. “It’s the two Ps, polarization and paranoia.”
Lest the Core critics forget, there’s a third P: pupils. A single set of high national standards lets everyone — teachers, principals and parents — know where students stand and, more important, what all of us can do to help them succeed.