The Common Core Standards

As promised, I will offer a very brief background of the Common Core Standards initiatives and present you with my opinion.   The Common Core Standards are an attempt to have all schools in the United States teach the same curriculum by developing standards in English and Math.   The National Governors Association and the Council for Chief State School Officers are responsible for creating the standards and encouraging every State to adopt the Common Core Standards. By adopting the standards, each State will have agreed to teach the same curriculum to all of the children in the United States.  Their mission is:

“The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”

Pennsylvania has adopted the Common Core Standards.  You can find them here.

There is a robust discussion concerning the purpose and potential unintended effects of adopting the Common Core Standards.  In other words, not everyone thinks it is a great idea to have a national curriculum.   The Common Core is an educational reform effort rooted in the premise of free-market competition.  The core belief among free-market educational reformers is that competition in the educational sector will improve public schools.  Competition, according to this view, will force public education (a legal monopoly in the eyes of free-market reformers) to compete against each other and other private schools.  A big piece to the free-market reformers efforts to inject competition in the public education sector is standardized testing of children so the public can compare test results from school district to school district.  According to this philosophy of testing, children must be tested on similar material so the public can compare schools easier.  By comparing schools against schools, so the theory goes, parents will be able to choose the most effective schools to send their children. Before giving my view of the Common Core, please take time to read this report that critiques the free-market education reform movement.  I strive to be “fair and balanced”!

How do I feel about the Common Core Standards?  I am very skeptical of market driven reform efforts.  After all, public education does deal with widgets, we deal with kids.  I am also very worried about the effects of a standardized curriculum on our children.  The biggest concern is that local control of the school system is being taken away in the name of educational reform.  A school’s curriculum should reflect the lives and experiences of the children.  How can a group of people develop a curriculum that is relevant for every community in the United States?  Anyone that has tried to teach a child (whether in a school setting or not) can attest to the fact that you must make the lesson relevant to their lives.  What easier way to accomplish that task then to create a lesson or curriculum centered on the place the child lives? Finally, the fact that a national curriculum is being implemented begs two questions:  First, what is being taught and second (and maybe more importantly) what is not being taught.  Whichever way you look at those questions, there is virtually no input from local communities and schools and that (in my humble opinion) is a problem.  

I also want to note that the reasons there are different reform efforts being bantered about is that there were (and are) public schools that were not educating children the way that they should have been educated.  Allowing students to graduate functionally illiterate or allowing 30%-40% of the children not to graduate is unacceptable.  I am of the belief that not all of the responsibility is on the school system for these faults (society allows families to live in squalor whether in the cities or in the country); all of us must take a collective responsibility for the education of all students.  However, education was a part of the system that simply did not educate some children and politicians and other advocacy groups stepped in with their ideas.