CURMUDGUCATION: AP Notices Common Core Failure

CURMUDGUCATION: AP Notices Common Core Failure:

AP Notices Common Core Failure

In the midst of arguing about whose poll data supports which side in the debate about public education, AP writer Christine Amario Saturday noted that "As Common Core results trickle in, initial goals unfulfilled."

What began as an effort to increase transparency and allow parents and school leaders to assess performance nationwide has largely unraveled, chiefly because states are dropping out of the two testing groups and creating their own exams.

Common Core boosters have dealt with this big slice of failure by simply ignoring it and developing selective amnesia about the goal of having every state on the same page. But Amario offers a few reminders.

For instance, she takes us back to 2010 and Arne Duncan's promise that the tests would end the practice of having "fifty goalposts." In fact, back in the Core's infancy, Core pushers were pretty straightforward about how the whole program leaned on the testing component would push schools to adopt matching-- well, they couldn't say the word "curriculum" because a federally-inflicted curriculum would be illegal. But remember-- one advantage would be that a student moving from Idaho to Arkansas would be able to make the transition without missing a beat.

Amario even manages to get someone from Brookings to say something useful.

"The whole idea of Common Core was to bring students and schools under a common definition of what success is," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And Common Core is not going to have that. One of its fundamental arguments has been knocked out from under it."

Of course, part of the problem was that Core fans grossly underestimated the reaction to federal overreach. And while some Americans did (and still do) support the ideas behind the Core and Core CURMUDGUCATION: AP Notices Common Core Failure: