A Distraction from Real Education Reform
The emphasis on common standards is drawing attention away from bigger problems
October 28, 2013 RSS Feed Print
Policymakers and reform advocates alike have rallied around introducing a set of national content standards, suggesting that this will jump-start the stagnating achievement of U.S. students. As history clearly indicates, simply calling for students to know more is not the same as ensuring they will learn more. Discussions of the Common Core standards are actually sucking all of the air out of the room, distracting attention from any serious efforts to reform our schools.
To be sure, it is a real problem when students in one state learn very different things than those in other states, and in particular when many students lack the skills needed for our modern economy. We really do have a national labor market, implying that significant numbers of our population end up living and working in a state with different needs than the one where they were born and went to school. The presumption behind having national standards (whether voluntary or coerced) is that having a clearer and more consistent statement of learning objectives across states will tend to lessen the problem of students bringing heterogeneous skills to the labor market. However, the fundamental problem is lack of minimal skills and not the heterogeneity of skills per se.
We currently have very different standards across states, and experience from the states provides little support for the argument that simply declaring more clearly what we want children to learn will have much impact. Proponents of national standards point to Massachusetts: strong standards and top results. But