Denial vs paranoia with Common Core education standards
I deny that I’m in denial. But I don’t deny that Neal McCluskey is paranoid, along with Jay Greene and a few other ardent blogsters and op-edsters.
Even as states tumble over one another—eight as of yesterday—to replace their crummy school standards (in reading and math) with the solid new “common core” education standards, such critics say the sky is falling. Because they have trouble denying—that word again—that the new standards have considerable merit, they warn of two perils that, they insist, lurk just over the horizon: either the federal government will take over (and mandate) this state-led (and voluntary) initiative and/or the loopiest of educationists will gradually gain control over it and dumb it down.
Tis true, even paranoids have enemies, and it’s theoretically possible that such things could one day happen. This I do not deny. My Fordham colleagues and I are in the midst of a project designed to avert those troubling but unlikely outcomes by devising a workable governance structure for the “common core” that keeps it firmly in state—and lay—hands over the long run.
The far greater threat that America faces, however, is continued educational mediocrity and an ill-trained citizenry in a shrinking, globalizing and ever more competitive world, one where nearly all our rivals have (among other things) national education standards and tests. This is no theoretical problem. It’s a clear and present danger.
Nobody in his right mind claims that standards alone will turn this around. They merely set the destination by prescribing what our kids should know and be able to do (in two core subjects only) at various stages of their K-12 education. Actually reaching that destination calls for many other changes in state capitals, local school systems and individual classrooms. It’s a hugely ambitious undertaking and I doubt that every state claiming to adopt the “common core” will then bestir itself to do the needful to make it real.
Still and all, it’s better to aim high than low and that’s what the common core does—and what most states today fail to do. McCluskey & Co. don’t exactly deny that. It’s just that their paranoia causes them to deny all possible solutions to the problem.
–Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Related posts:
- Common Core education standards get A- and B from Fordham experts
- Draft “Common Core” education standards: Impressive, balanced, serious.
- Fordham comments on the Common Core State Standards
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June 17th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
[...] to the Fordham Institute’s Chester Finn, I and others like me are “paranoid.” So why, like Ozzy Osbourne, am I “frowning all the time?” Because I look at decades of [...]
June 17th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
All schools should teach a minimum of certain core ideas.
Teachers who can teach should be allowed to do so unfettered by standards, bureaucracies, rules, teacher testing and unnecessary licensing regulations and fees.
Some excellent math and science teachers remain out of the classroom because of one or two points on a Praxis score, a missing detail on an application or a reluctance to pay an unjust “tuition” fee that makes little or no sense.
We need to return to a more pragmatic fair system where minor, mandated requirements can be waived when it is obvious the talent and skill within the person is more than a basic, core understanding of what is required.
Common standards should not mean a lack of common sense when it refers to applications, hiring, recruitment or retention of otherwise qualified human beings.
June 17th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
I have yet to be convinced that addition and subtraction with the standard algorithms in 4th grade, and multiplication and division in 6th grade with their corresponding standards algorithms is “to aim high”.
June 17th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Oh – and of course you’ll advocate that all schools which accept vouchers in NJ will follow the new CCSSI standards and take the new assessment consortia tests?
June 18th, 2010 at 2:42 am
Your support of standards (even good ones) as the primary mode of improving schools, in the face of the evidence that standards do *nothing* to enable better student learning is rather puzzling. (Perhaps standards are ineffective because they are to far removed from curricula and instruction???)
Your comment “The far greater threat that America faces, however, is continued educational mediocrity and an ill-trained citizenry in a shrinking, globalizing and ever more competitive world, one where nearly all our rivals have (among other things) national education standards and tests. This is no theoretical problem. It’s a clear and present danger.” seems like you would be looking for real solutions. So why do you keep rehashing the idea of standards that have repeatedly shown no merit within the classroom?
How much more evidence do you need to abandon standards as a primary mode of improving schools? FL and MA have had similar, small improvements in learning (NAEP) and yet your analysis of their standards could not have been more different (MA great; FL terrible). As Whitehurst has so aptly pointed out: standards have no evidence of efficacy. So why have you not embraced reforms that do have evidence of efficacy: curricula, external exit exams, and school autonomy? All ideas that are both consistent with the Fordham philosophy and enabling students to learn well.
It is easy to dismiss McCluskey and Greene as paranoid. Less easy to dismiss the extensive evidence that standards have failed to improve student learning.
June 21st, 2010 at 12:58 pm
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