Common Core Debate Is Really Just Another Chapter of Test-and-Punish
The debate about the Common Core Standards and the Common Core tests is not really about whether our public school curriculum ought to be more uniform and perhaps more challenging from place to place. That would be a debate worth having. But really instead the Common Core is the latest chapter in a long story being circulated by our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and others who share his philosophy that teachers and students alike can best be motivated by behaviorist rewards and punishments—competition, pressure and fear.
The driver here is testing—competition for high scores and punishments for low scores—along with the collection of data. (It is essential to remember that data-driven school reform has arrived at just the moment we have the computer-driven capacity to collect and process data, and this school reform philosophy is being promoted in many cases by the same business entrepreneurs who developed the computers.) We are told that if we threaten school districts and schools and teachers where students are struggling, everybody will work harder and our children will do better in a world dominated by global competitiveness. Standards-and-accountability school reform has become so embedded into our national consciousness that it’s hard to remember there might be another way.
If you are looking for an up-to-date review of the issues about the Common Core, read this
