"On the whole, I think the Common Core is a good thing for the country," says Reville, former executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform. Importantly, they worry that suddenly dropping or stalling the Common Core after four years of preparation, without offering a reasonable substitute, will seriously derail teachers and kids.īut with so much controversy and division, the question today is: Will the Core survive? High ExpectationsĪs former Secretary of Education for Massachusetts, Professor Paul Reville was instrumental in the Commonwealth's adoption of the Common Core, and he remains a stalwart supporter. They are asking skeptics to simply give the standards a chance, insisting that their emphasis on reasoning and critical thinking will better prepare students for college and the workforce. Proponents - once elated at how fast the standards were adopted - suddenly find themselves scrambling to stem a mutiny. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker recently asked the state legislature to drop the standards. In June, South Carolina and Oklahoma followed, and other states are considering at least slowing implementation. In Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal, formerly a strong Core proponent, has done a complete flip and is now battling his state's education superintendent in efforts to scuttle the new standards. In March, Indiana, one of the first states to adopt the Common Core, became the first to back out.
Critics complain that this massive change to American education - one of the most significant shifts ever - was rushed through without any real democratic process or empirical data supporting the value. Some worry that corporate interests are the real force behind the Core, since they'll reap huge profits from selling new tests and preparation materials, and many are deeply suspicious of the hundreds of millions of dollars the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation poured into supporting the effort.Īs all these concerns converged, the tide began to turn. Some parents find the new standards impossibly frustrating, especially the math component, famously skewered by comedian Louis C.K., whose mother was a math teacher, for making his daughters hate school. Teachers' unions are split: Some local groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the New York State United Teachers, oppose the new standards entirely, while the two national unions - the National Educators Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) - support the Core but want delays in implementation. Parents sick of the testing culture are drawing a line with the new Core assessments, and some states are balking at the increased time and costs of these tests. The Tea Party, dubbing the standards as "Obamacore," paints them as an intolerable intrusion of the federal government into local control of schools. Today, the Common Core is not only on the public radar, but the focus of a growing nationwide resistance from an unusual coalition of right-wingers, liberals, teachers, and parents, for a variety of very different reasons. The public paid little attention - until the 2014–15 deadline for standardized testing of the new standards loomed. Five more states embraced them over the next two years. Chamber of Commerce, in 2010 the standards sailed remarkably fast through adoption in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, as well as the business community, including the U.S. With widespread bipartisan support from such ideological opponents as U.S. Just last year, according to a Gallup poll, most Americans had never heard of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, or "Common Core," new guidelines for what kids in grades K–12 should be able to accomplish in reading, writing, and math.ĭesigned to raise student proficiencies so the United States can better compete in a global market, the standards were drafted in 2009 by a group of academics and assessment specialists at the request of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
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