Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post

Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post

Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform

A new book tells the story

The Common Core State Standards was one of the biggest initiatives in decades aimed at changing public education — and like many school “reforms” in the era of high-stakes standardized testing, it did not accomplish what its promoters said it would.

(Harvard Education Press)

How and why that happened is the subject of a new book by Tom Loveless, an expert on student achievement, testing, education policy and K-12 school reform — “Between The State And The Schoolhouse: Understanding The Failure of Common Core.” Below is an excerpt.

Common Core was an initiative to create and implement new math and English language arts standards that would be used by all schools. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded their creation, and they were promoted by the Obama administration.

Then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan used a federal grant program, Race to the Top, to pressure states to adopt them — and the vast majority did during Obama’s first term. The Obama administration spent some $360 million for two multistate consortia to develop new Core-related standardized tests, with Duncan promising that the new tests would be “an absolute game-changer” in public education. They weren’t. CONTINUE READING: Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post