Supporters of Common Core have made some of the same political mistakes that opponents of gay marriage did. They figured if they could get the US Department of Education, DC-based organizations, and state school chiefs on board, they would have a direct and definitive victory. And at first blush it looked like they had achieved it, with about 45 states committing to adopt the new set of standards and federally-sponsored standardized tests aligned to those standards. Like opponents of gay marriage, the Common Core victory seemed so overwhelming that they hardly felt the need to engage in debates to defend it. But in the rush to a clear and total victory, supporters of Common Core failed to consider how the more than 10,000 school districts, more than 3 million teachers, and the parents of almost 50 million students would react. For standards to actually change practice, you need a lot of these folks on board. Otherwise Common Core, like most past standards, will just be a bunch of empty words in a document. These millions of local officials, educators, and parents often have reasons for holding educational preferences that are different than those dictated by Common Core. Common Core may call for things like more focus on “informational texts” and delaying Algebra until 9th grade, but there are reasons why that is not already universal practice. It’s not as if local officials, educators, and parents are unaware of the existence of informational texts or just waiting to be told by national elites about when they should start teaching Algebra. They have interests and values that drove them to the arrangements that were in place prior to Common Core. Having the Secretary of Education, state boards, and a bunch of DC advocacy groups declare a particular approach to be best and cram it into place in the middle of a financial crisis with virtually no public debate or input from educators or parents did not convince local officials, educators, and parents to change their minds. These are the folks who need to be on board to make the implementation of Common Core real. And these are the folks who are organizing a political backlash that will undo or neuter Common Core. A direct path to victory by Common Core supporters sowed the seeds of its own defeat. The unraveling of Common Core makes this flop the most obviously ill-conceived and doomed-to-fail reform effort since the Annenberg Foundation threw $500 million away in the 1990s. I assure you that while the money was flowing from Annenberg that effort had plenty of defenders, just as Common Core does today. After Common Core fails, everyone will say how they knew it was flawed, just as they currently do with Annenberg. Victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 22:35:53 +0000
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