Common Core is Losing Ground

The Heartland Institute: Throughout the nation, state legislators are debating whether to pass, reject, or even repeal Common Core State Standards. Legislation to repeal Common Core is being considered in Arizona, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota. Four states – Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia – never adopted the standards. Another four states – Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina – originally adopted the standards and have since successfully repealed them.

Common Core establishes a significant centralization of government control over curricula used in public school districts across the country. The standards are not “world class” and do not improve the quality of education for the nation’s children; their sole purpose rather is to expand the reach of the federal government into every school in America.

Heartland Research Fellow Joy Pullmann says Common Core creates a number of problems. “[There are myriad] concerns [regarding these standards that] include lack of public input, costs, lost teacher autonomy, crony capitalism, academic quality, and experimental testing,” said Pullmann.

Pullmann says in her Heartland Policy Tip Sheet on Common Core that states need to regain control of their public schools’ destiny if they really want to improve education results. “States should replace Common Core with higher-quality, state-controlled academic standards and tests not funded by the federal government,” Pullmann said. “They should secure student data privacy and ensure national testing mandates do not affect instruction in private and home schools”Point 1: Common Core is of mediocre academic quality, according to nationally known experts, and research shows education standards do not improve student achievement.

Point 2: Common Core was not created by states in any meaningful sense. It was written behind closed doors by unelected committees inside organizations funded largely by the federal government.

Point 3: Most states have agreed to subject their laws to federally funded and monitored Common Core testing groups, largely through contracts legislatures have not reviewed.

Point 4: Many states promised the federal government they would trade their standards for Common Core before a draft or final version of the standards was published.

Point 5: The national Common Core testing groups have not specified what data they will require of states within their student assessments, but they have promised the federal government will receive full access. The Obama administration has removed federal protections that in the past limited student data-sharing and required schools to inform parents of it.

Point 6: Common Core threatens school choice, private schools, and home schools by creating a national market for education in which all tests—including the SAT, ACT, Iowa Basic, and Stanford 10—and most curricula are structured according to one system.

Point 7: Common Core is entirely experimental. No state or school has ever tested it.

Point 8: Education standards are not curriculum, but they determine what children will and will not learn. They define curriculum. And the federally funded testing consortia are creating a model Common Core curriculum, although federal curriculum creation is illegal.

Point 9: Almost no state has analyzed how much retraining teachers, new curriculum, and upgrading technology by 2016 for online-only Common Core tests will cost taxpayers.

Point 10: There is no process for parents, teachers, and school boards to provide feedback or gain flexibility on all or part of Common Core as students begin encountering it.

Point 11: Common Core assumes one schedule of learning fits all children, and a small group of paid experts know what it is. It also rests on the premise, rejected by many communities and parents, that the sole purpose of public education is workforce training.

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