EDITORIALS

How to erode standards

The crumbling core of American education

THE LATEST bugaboo of the ring-tailed roarers on both the far right and left of American education has a name: Common Core.

That’s shorthand for a set of simple but not so simply achieved goals for American education. What’s long been needed are uniform standards that apply all over the country-instead of the lazy, hazy patchwork of always changing goals set by every state and sometimes every school district in the country.

But all the usual suspects have formed an unholy alliance against filling so clear and obvious a need in American education-the teachers’ unions, the scaremongers on both sides of the political spectrum, the array of vested interests in the status mediocre quo . . . and all the forces of inertia in general. Their aim: Dilute, delay and do whatever else they can to sabotage a common core of standards that would apply to all students all across the country.

Naturally conspiracy theorists of all persuasions would unite against it, seeing it as a nefarious plot instead of a simple, long needed reform.

Given a common core of uniform standards, American students could all take the same tests, and so the progress (or lack of it) of students in, say, Arkansas could be readily compared to how well those in New York or California or Iowa or any other state are doing. Which may be just what bothers those in the education establishment, or just the legion of kibitzers outside it: They don’t want to make it easier to hold students, teachers, parents or administrators accountable.

It’s so much easier for those in charge of the system to float along as they always have. No matter the result. Which is one reason this country spends so much on public education and gets so little in return.

The notion that every state, or maybe subdivision thereof, should set its own standards has some drawbacks-like being duplicative, wasteful, and ineffective. Just to start with. It’s also a fine way to bring educational standards down to the lowest common denominator, if not lower.

Why should students in different states be held to different standards-if they’re held to any standards at all? That approach makes less and less sense as Americans compete more and more in a global economy. Does math, say, change every time you cross a state line? How much sense does it make to have different states set different standards for algebra? Answer: None.

The most predictable result of this war on a common core of educational standards for all is that those standards will be dumbed down. Even more so than they are now. Is this really the way we want our schools, and our kids, and our country, to go?

VARTAN Gregorian, who used to be president of Brown University and now heads the Carnegie Corporation, remains a staunch supporter of Common Core and American education in general. Long a voice for reason in a debate that has been marked by wild charges and fanciful conspiracy theories, he has spoken up for Common Core since its inception. And for common sense.

Andrew Carnegie noted a century ago that an educated citizenry was the great strength of American democracy. It still is. But as Dr. Gregorian notes, American education must not only be maintained but improved as the years go by. And “in an age overwhelmed by information, there is a genuine need to create a . . . system that will help students learn how to organize information into knowledge-as well as protect the promise of social mobility for young people that lies at the heart of the American dream.”

Without such a system of organized knowledge and clear accountability, that is, a system like Common Core, then coming generations will be left to drift in a fog of undifferentiated data rather than proceed in disciplined fashion to acquire the minimal requirements of a real education.

Why leave our young people at the mercy of shifting educational standards that may vary from state to state, locality to locality, and vary in quality and competence, too, defying any attempt to make American education either accountable or even comprehensible? That is no way to educate one nation indivisible.

Editorial, Pages 18 on 04/26/2014

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