February 10, 2013
What's wrong with Common Core
Michael Paul Goldenberg, Rational Math Ed
1. It's a rigid, one-size fits all system that presumes to know now, for everyone, everywhere, what EVERY child "must" know in order to be successful in a rapidly-changing world in which the rate of change increases all the time. Such an approach is guaranteed to always be dramatically lagging behind the demands of reality, stifling creativity at every level imaginable, punishing those who dare to try to escape the centralization and conformity such an approach to anything inevitably brings.
2. It is another doomed attempt to bring about meaningful change through a top-down, punitive system that will be badly misunderstood by many -- even if everything in it were good, which is far from the case -- and resented by those who for good reasons or bad view it as a wrong-headed path. Much research indicates that such reforms are fated to fail badly because few at the ground level were given a real voice in the process. Despite the propaganda that this is a state-led reform effort, it is in fact a federal one, supported primarily by corporate interests who are playing this opportunity for all it's worth -- new textbooks, new assessments, and new professional development all lining the pockets of the publishers and testing companies. And whether it succeeds or fails matters not -- they will profit greatly on this and will be ready to profit further when the next wave of change comes, innocently declaring that not they, but "the states" were the ones who brought this about.
3. Regardless of the hype, at the ground level, teachers, administrators, and other key stake-holders believe that this is all about test scores. As long as that is the case (and it in fact IS the case in fact if not in theory), this reform effort will simply comprise another decade of game-playing in which kids, teachers, and learning will be sacrificed at the altar of high-stakes tests. Moreover, the computer-adaptive tests and the propaganda surrounding them are clearly NOT to the advantage of learners: they take away control of the testing process from the test-taker and completely put it into the hands of a computer. How can that possibly advantage the students? They can't go back to problems previously answered to revise answers that they gain insight about from questions asked later. They can't skip questions that baffle them initially and return to them when they choose, for whatever reason. The technology is designed to minimize the time for testing, reducing cost, appealing to students whose main desire is to be done with the process as quickly as they can, but at the price of losing their full opportunity to maximize their performance. As they are unlikely to understand this cost (just as parents, teachers, and administrators are unlikely to see it unless they have given a great deal of thought to how to excel on standardized tests), they will sell themselves out in the name of relief, little realizing (and for most, little caring) that the price they pay is so steep.