The Slippery Slope of the Common Core
by Frederick M. Hess • Jan 15, 2014 at 8:55 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Since the Common Core standards were unveiled in 2010, advocates have insisted that it's a "state-led" effort. President Obama declared in the 2011 State of the Union, "These standards were developed... not by Washington, but by Republican and Democratic governors throughout the country." This past June, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thundered, "The federal government didn't write them, didn't approve them, and doesn't mandate them, and we never will. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or willfully misleading."
Tony Evers, state superintendent for Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin legislature, "To those who are concerned that the Common Core represents too much 'federal intrusion'... I was not coerced by the federal government to adopt the Common Core [and] didn't adopt" it in response to the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" federal grant program, which rewarded states for adopting the Common Core. It's apparently just a coincidence that Wisconsin adopted the standards on June 2, 2010, the day they were released--as promised in the state's "Race to the Top" application. Just as it's presumably a coincidence that Kentucky adopted the standards before they were released--a move celebrated in its "Race to the Top" application.
It's hard to take seriously the insistence that the feds played no role when Secretary Duncan said this
