Name one Common Core standard you disagree with.
That's the challenge Superintendent Heath Morrison says he puts to those who argue that North Carolina needs to scrap the reading and math guidelines that states have spent years hashing out. He said he never gets a specific answer, just comments about federal intrusion.
"We're having this conversation for all the wrong reasons, and none of it is about education," Morrison told the Tuesday Breakfast Forum this week.
I'm scheduled to take a turn at the General Assembly next week. Maybe I'll hear some intense debate over whether eighth-graders really need to be able to analyze and solve linear equations and pairs of simultaneous linear equations, or whether it's reasonable to expect first-graders to identify and use headers, tables of contents and glossaries to locate key facts in a text.
But I doubt it. One reason I've written so little about these standards is that they're so wonky and dense. You can read through them here (block out some serious time), but it won't make you the life of the next political debate.
I spent four hours at a recent Education Writers Association seminar listening to a wide range of experts talk about Common Core. The consensus: The standards themselves are about specific academic goals that originated with governors, superintendents and school boards. They've been hashed out over several years by experts, educators and consultants.
And recently they've become entangled in partisan politics and testing controversy.
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| Cohen |
Mike Cohen of the DC-based nonprofit group Achieve, who helped develop the standards with state leaders, said President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan inadvertently hurt the cause by "taking credit" for the Common Core push and using Race to the Top grants to prod states to embrace the standards.
Opposition now comes from Republicans who call it federal intrusion and liberals who oppose the testing associated with the standards. "You've got this left-right dynamic that makes it particularly hard to move forward," Cohen said.
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| Hess |
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, who blogs for Education Week, laid out the federal intrusion case. The national consistency state leaders say they're seeking isn't likely to happen without strong federal intervention, he said. For instance, if states set their own cut scores and standards on testing, we'll get the same wild variation we've seen with state exams. If the federal government has to approve standards, well, they become federal standards. And yes, he cited the way the Obama administration has used Race to the Top grants to push many states (including North Carolina) toward adopting the standards and the common exams.
But Hess said "repeal and replace" advocates have generally failed to show they're serious about doing the hard work it will take to craft alternative standards, design better tests and get schools to adopt them.
Is North Carolina ready to plunge in and show the country how to do it right? I suspect we'll soon find out.
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