Common Core: We once wanted to beat the Soviets. Now, we are... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Common Core: We once wanted to beat the Soviets. Now, we are... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Common Core: We once wanted to beat the Soviets. Now, we are following their lead in education. 

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Marching in lockstep toward Common Core

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By Maureen Downey

Here is a guest piece by Stephen Owens, a graduate of Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone. A a teacher for six years, Owens  is a doctoral candidate in educational policy at the University of Georgia.

By Stephen Owens

As the arguments over the Common Core State Standards continue to rage in Georgia, it is worth taking a step back and noting its origins. Reforms like the Common Core have been around for centuries of education, but Georgians should be more interested in how the United States has gotten to a place where each new reform is accepted if it just promises to undo the work of the last.

The beginning of our national thirst for reinvented schools is the same place as the apparent end: Soviet Russia.

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik into Earth orbit and triggered what has come to be known as the Space Race. It was a well-known (and incorrect) fact that the U.S.S.R. had beaten the U.S. to space because of the failure of American schools to produce high-level scientists and engineers.

The solution, it was proposed, was for public schools to take on more difficult mathematics and