Sheila Byrd Carmichael, Gabrielle Martino, Kathleen Porter-Magee, W. Stephen Wilson:
he K-12 academic standards in English language arts (ELA) and math produced last month by the Common Core State Standards Initiative are clearer and more rigorous than today’s ELA standards in 37 states and today’s math standards in 39 states, according to the Fordham Institute’s newest study. In 33 of those states, the Common Core bests both ELA and math standards. Yet California, Indiana and the District of Columbia have ELA standards that are clearly superior to those of the Common Core. And nearly a dozen states have ELA or math standards in the same league as Common Core. Read on to find out more and see how your state fared.
Wisconsin’s standards (WKCE) have often been criticized. This year’s study grants the Badger State a “D” in Language Arts and an “F” in Math.
Over the last few days I’ve reviewed the Common Core State Standards (http://www.corestandards.org/) that are the current rage. Of course, Thomas Fordham Institute has been criticizing state standards for years now, giving failing or near failing grades to many states’ standards. States are falling all over themselves to accept the CCSS, replacing their existing standards. One would think, listening to positive reviews that these standards would light the road to school reform. But you would be wrong!
One could better title this continuing farce after Sacha Cohen’s Borat movie as “Core Standards: Cultural Learnings of Educrats for Make Benefit Glorious Schools of America”, where Cohen finally replaces Borat and Bruno with a new cast of characters modeled after Bill Gates, Randi Weingarten, E.D. Hirsch, Roy Romer who breathlessly praise this effort as though some magical incantation.
“This is an historic day for American public education and for our nation as we begin the journey to level the academic playing field for every student. State Boards of Education are ready to play an active role in this process and some have already started the progression of adoption. We are eager to move this agenda forward.” Amen.
Really, these standards are quite vague, and really say nothing at all, much less have any vision on how these outputs get implemented, or funds the inputs to create these outputs, vague as they are.
The late Asa Hilliard, had the right idea. “The Standards Movement: Quality Control or Decoy?” (http://www.africawithin.com/hilliard/standards_movement.htm).
“I believe that the standards movement is generally a decoy. I don’t care whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican who calls for it. Usually, when people put so much emphasis on standards as a school reform tool, it means that they want to look like they’re performing a reform effort, but they’re actually moonwalking. They look like they’re going forward but they’re going backwards…. I’m a little bit tired of people getting credit for improving education by doing the cheapest thing they can do, which is to call for the manipulation of test scores or to create new standards. These new standards are not going to be any better than the ones the College Board developed in the College Board’s Green Book: What Students Need to Know and Do in Order to Graduate from College. They’re not going to be any higher or better than the standards of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, [Hilliard and Sizemore, et al, Saving the African American Child. Washington, DC: National Alliance of Black School Educators, 1984]. In fact, I’ll take any standards that you come up with as long as they’re high enough. If you get a consensus of a group of thinking people, I don’t think you can write a set of standards that won’t make sense.”
“In some ways, I see the standards movement as Trivial Pursuit. We know it’s not a reform tool and yet we move ahead as if it’s a reform tool. I know why we ended up with national standards. After the Republicans gutted the social services budget, the politicians still wanted to look good to the people, so they could say they were making the best effort they could under the circumstances. In other words, they had to address the question, “What can I do with no money?” Basically, nothing but showboat.”