Jay Greene as Dr. Freud

yes Chester E. Finn, Jr. / September 1, 2011

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Image by Cesar Blanco"][/caption]

Jay Greene has played many roles in American education, most of them useful, but as far as I can recall this is the first time he has sought to inhabit, interpret, and report on other people's fantasy lives. Is this not akin to porn? Faux Freudianism? Total fantasizing on his own part? Joining Rick Perry in hearing the voice of the Almighty?

In any case, while he is surely correct that there are some political tatters on the fringe of the Common Core standards effort, he could not be more wrong about my fantasies. Never in a million years have I sought or yearned to or connived or fantasized about taking charge of those standards. I'd far rather play with my grandchildren.

He might have done the real world some real good if he had focused on the important fact that until we know what the forthcoming Common Core assessments actually look like, how much they will cost to operationalize, how many states will stick with them, and where the cut scores on them will be set, we won't really know whether we have a version of "national standards" (Jay's phrase, not mine) that is worth applauding. So far only the first act of this drama has been played.

?Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Category: Standards, Testing, & Accountability