Bill to halt Common Core in Kentucky has merit

Kentucky lawmakers have filed a bill that would, among other things, halt implementation of Common Core Standards (CCS) in the state and direct the Kentucky Board of Education to recommend new content standards to local districts, which would ultimately be granted autonomy over curricular decisions.

While I can see the merits in CCS, and have dutiful ensured that my education administration students are fully prepared to implement the new standards in their schools, I have also counted myself a Common Core skeptic from the beginning.  Now I am increasingly convinced that states should, indeed, consider back-pedaling on Common Core and revisit the topic of who has authority over curricular standards and how schools should be held accountable for implementing them.

House Bill 215 was introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly last week by Rep. Tom Kerr of Taylor Mill and nine co-sponsors, all of them Republicans.  You can read a thorough description of the bill, and get a link to its full text, at the Bluegrass Institute blog.  The bill is more than a simple repeal of Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards.  Rather, it establishes a framework for ensuring that Kentucky - and especially local boards of education - maintain full control and autonomy over curricular decisions.

Defenders of the new standards, including some of my friends at the Kentucky Department of Education, will have you believe that the only people who are concerned about Common Core are right-wing extremists.   Kentucky House Education Committee chairman Derek Graham tried to blame talk radio for cooking up the controversy.  But careful study of the issue, including a review of who is writing in opposition to the CCS and what they are saying, suggests that these concerns are shared by a wide, diverse, and intelligent array of people.

Just to illustrate the depth and breadth of concerns about the Common Core, consider the following:

• I am definitely no fan of Diane Ravitch as no two people could be farther apart than she and I over on the issue of educational improvement.  But consider her many thoughtful arguments against the Common Core in her recent speech to the Modern Language Association.  I repeat: those opposed to Common Core represent both liberals and conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and otherwise.
• Anthony Cody (again, not someone with whom I agree much, or who would agree with me) makes an excellent case for how the Common Core Standards were rushed into development with little meaningful input from educators or parents, and how the federal government coerced states into CCS adoption with the carrot and stick of NCLB waivers and multi-million dollar grants.
• Dick Innes, education analyst for the Bluegrass Policy Institute, shows how concerns about the Next Generation Science Standards have little to do with evolution and a lot to do with squeezing out chemistry and physics.  Furthermore, Innes argues that because Kentucky has no actual ownership over the CCS or NGSS, we have little control over how to improve their deficiencies or the inevitable national tests that will be used to assess student progress.
• Joanne Yatvin, past president of the National Council for Teachers of English, exposes flaws in the Common Core Standards for English/Langauge Arts, but to Dick's point above, what is to be done about it?

The truth is, Common Core has been fraught with problems from the beginning.  Kentucky, in a rush to implement 2009's Senate Bill 1 that once again overhauled the state's accountability system, became the first state to adopt CCS before the standards were even finalized.  Some 0f this urgency was actually driven by Republican lawmakers who wanted assurances that Kentucky schools were performing on par with other states, and Common Core promised a framework that would provide consistency of curriculum on a multi-state scale.

Many educators welcomed the idea of Common Core because we recognized weaknesses in the existing state standards.  Curricular experts like Robert Marzano, Doug Reeves, and Mike Schmoker had taught us that, in order to ensure a "guaranteed, viable curriculum" for every student (the foundation of meaningful school improvement efforts), standards need to be clear, well-aligned across grade levels, and few in number.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education reform think tank whose work I typically admire, has argued that the Common Core Standards represent a real improvement in terms of curricular organization for most states.  But as I wrote over two years ago, however the CCS may have improved curricular clarity or alignment, any educator can see that there are too many standards to effectively teach to proficiency in a single year.  And at any rate, as Eric Hanushek argues, what makes a difference in student outcomes has far more to do with how teachers teach curricular targets than the targets themselves.

It was clear even then that Common Core was likely to be a huge, expensive educational undertaking that had little promise of actually improving student achievement.  And the cost was greater than time and money: Common Core represents a massive loss of local and state autonomy over one of the most critical realms of education. 

We know that gross standardization of the learning process is a key, failing feature of existing educational structures.   We need more choice, innovation, and personalization in our experiences of schooling.  The more standardized and nationalized the education industry becomes, the less likely such individualization can occur.

As Jay P. Greene artfully argues, top-down accountability mechanisms are not the answer to our educational problems, and Common Core represents the current pinnacle of top-down efforts to nationalize schooling in America.  Curricular choices certainly do matter, but if schools are to improve it will be through effective instructional leadership and teaching practices implemented at a local level, hopefully with a healthy dose of bottom-up accountability structures that ensure failing schools can't hold families captive.

For all these reasons, Kentuckians should give House Bill 215 a serious look, and should keep the focus of instructional improvement where it ought to be: in the local school and its classrooms and in the marketplace of educational choices.