The Common Core Kool-Aid
by Frederick M. Hess • Nov 30, 2012 at 10:05 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
In a number of conversations this week over at Jeb Bush's annual edu-fest, at AEI, and around DC, I was struck by the degree to which the Common Core seems to have become Dr. Pendergast's miracle cure for everything that ails you (seemingly including heat blisters). The exchanges were eerily reminiscent of the run-up to Waiting for Superman, when smart, enthusiastic people kept telling me how everything was about to change--how suburban voters would wake up and leap on the reform bandwagon. And it reminds me more than a little of conversations had earlier this decade or back in the '90s about how NCLB, school choice, or site-based management were going to change everything as well.
As best I can tell, none of those previous predictions came true. Now, I don't mean to come across as a tedious, "nothing works" naysayer. The Common Core is a different exercise from those earlier cure-alls, and it might play out differently. I honestly don't know where the truth lies. For one thing, as I've noted previously: I personally don't feel qualified to judge the quality of the Common Core standards; I don't think standards themselves matter all that much--all the action is in the stuff that follows; and I've seen a remarkable dearth of attention to how the Common Core will complement or clash with other key elements of the "reform" agenda
