The Common Core Standards We're Not Talking About

Saying no to Common Core is not saying no to improving education. It is not an either/or scenario. Neither are the problems universal. Some schools and students in Utah are doing exceptionally well, but viewing the problem in terms of performance averages lends itself to the messaging that a one-size-fits-all program is the solution. What of the ideas for targeted improvement that were never heard (or were underway and cut short) because we circumvented the meaningful exchange of ideas that good process allows? I’m stunned by the blind confidence so many have in Common Core with absolutely nothing but marketing claims to go on. I also don’t think it is accurate to say that Common Core is the first effort at recognizing that many students are not as academically prepared as we would like. We’ve been hearing doomsday predictions about the crisis in US education for decades. Check out the cover of the March 24, 1958 of Life magazine about the education crisis in which we were going to be overtaken by the Soviet Union, or recall the publishing of A Nation at Risk in the ’80s. Why is the U.S. still here while the USSR imploded and other nations with top test takers still copying US patented technology? Liberty (protected by adhering to good principles of self-government that were trampled in the adoption of CC) matters –– the opportunity, free market and entrepreneurship that liberty engenders matters. I’m not saying there isn’t room to improve academics, but our representative form of government is perhaps the greatest competitive advantage our country has had and I think it a huge mistake to overlook it as a critical ingredient of whatever solutions/improvements we pursue. Great education and good principles of self government are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary I believe competing “laboratories of democracy” are key to innovation and improvement that can be contrasted with other approaches and then emulated with confidence. I think there is strong evidence that increasingly centralized control and the conveyor-belt style of education that it promotes is exactly the opposite of what our children will need for success going forward. Some see the idea of involving every local community in education decisions, or leaving education up to local communities as inefficient. That is a factory mentality that implies students are not the client of our schools, but the product. I believe those who know, love and see the students every day are best qualified to determine what each individual needs. In other words, I prefer inefficient to inhuman.