Proponents of Common Core defend objections from parents and teachers by insisting two things: First, it’s a state lead not a federal initiative. Second, standards are not the same as curriculum. Hmmm... It looks like semantics to me. What I know is that New York was an early adopter of Common Core and experienced “extreme disappointment” from parents and educators. Those are facts that you don’t have to have a law degree to understand. However, I see why Common Core advocates are quick to make these two arguments, because there are federal laws that prohibit the government from controlling states’ education and there are state laws that protect districts’ rights to own its curriculum. So these two arguments are important in ensuring Common Core appears legal. Again, this is for the lawyers to decide and it’s not where my initial concerns with Common Core are rooted (see my Feb 20 post). Nevertheless, let’s explore the implication of these two factors: Semantics as they are, if these standards are truly developed and controlled at the state level and states are guaranteed the freedom to change them then it negates the acclaimed Common Core benefit of students moving across state borders without experiencing education gaps. Now suppose a local school district decides to adopt a curriculum that’s outside of the Common Core standards, which everyone agrees is still a district’s freedom to do, what is the point? Teacher evaluations and students’ test scores are measured by the Common Core standards. So while fans of Common Core are quick to defend its legality, what is really happening here is loss of freedom in at least two places. How can a state make changes to a copyright protected program implemented across the nation by a federally appointed (not-elected) “consortium”? How can a school board give direction that deviates from national teacher evaluation criteria and student testing expectations? They don’t. The reasons the two issues are hot topics is because it jeopardizes freedoms guaranteed to Americans for generations. Quietly and unnoticed, this is how it happens.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 12:40:18 +0000
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