Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'?
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June 2, 2015 On a Monday morning in March, several hundred Albuquerque (New Mexico) High School students walked out of their first period classes and onto the grounds in front of school. Despite warnings from school leaders that they could lose the chance to walk in graduation ceremonies by participating in the protest, students chanted slogans and held up handmade signs with messages like, "We are not defined by test scores" and "We have a say in our education."
They were protesting new state tests aligned to the Common Core academic standards. "This test is infringing on our rights," says Maya Quinones, a senior and one of the protest organizers. Most of the students at Albuquerque High School are Hispanic and comes from low-income families.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan famously singled out "white suburban moms" for their opposition to the Common Core and the tests associated with it. But many low-income, minority communities aren't sold on the new standards, either. Skepticism in those communities challenges a key argument for why such standardized tests exist in the first place.
A tension has emerged between national civil rights groups, which generally support the Common Core and believe standardized tests can help promote equity, and grassroots activists, who say parents and students have a right to refuse to participate in state tests they don't believe in.
Supporters of test refusal "claim a false mantle of civil rights activism," twelve civil rights organizations said in a statement last month. When parents "opt-out" of state tests, the statement said, they undermine efforts to improve schools for all children.
To understand the debate, it helps to understand the civil rights logic that undergirded the 2002 federal law No Child Left Behind. "The story of children being just shuffled through the system is one of the saddest stories of America," then-President George W. Bush said when he signed the law. Lawmakers wanted to hold schools accountable for every child's progress, regardless of that child's background.
So No Child Left Behind required states to regularly test all children in math and reading, and to separate out scores by student characteristics such as race and disability status. States had to take action when children in any demographic failed to meet learning goals.
The Common Core builds on the same logic. In 2009, a group of experts, backed by state governors and foundations, created a set of learning goals they thought better aligned with the skills students need to succeed in college and the workforce. Today, 43 states have adopted the standards, and children in most of those states took Common Core-aligned tests this spring.
Yet the Common Core has proved incredibly controversial—even more controversial than No Child Left Behind. There's something in the standards for both Democrats and Republicans to hate, from the collection of private student data to the loss of local control. Almost all the Republican presidential candidates—with the exception of former Florida governor Jeb Bush—oppose the standards.
Opponents say U.S. children take too many standardized tests, they don't measure learning well, and the new standards aren't age-appropriate. Quinones thinks the tests aren't fair to Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'? - NationalJournal.com:
