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

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed

Tom Loveless is an experienced education researcher who taught sixth grade in California. He has long been skeptical of top-down solutions to classroom-level problems. In this post, he explains why Common Core failed.

The theory of standards-based reform is that if everyone has the same curriculum and the same instruction, no one will fall behind. Thirty years ago, I wrongly believed that, and I supported the idea of national standards written by those in the field. But it is perfectly obvious that students in the same school with the same teachers using the same curriculum and having the same instruction do indeed have different outcomes. Having the same standards, curriculum, and instruction does not assure equal outcomes for all students. David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, and Bill Gates, who funded the standards, did not know that.

He writes:

More than a decade after the 2010 release of Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, no convincing evidence exists that the standards had a significant, positive impact on student achievement. My forthcoming book next month—“Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core”—explores Common Core from the initiative’s promising beginnings CONTINUE READING: Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog