Tired Babysitters, Broken Windows, and the Common Core
by Frederick M. Hess • Jan 23, 2014 at 8:37 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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On Monday, I penned a column for National Review Online titled "What Ever Happened to 'State-Led'" that seemed to frustrate and puzzle a number of Common Core advocates. I heard from plenty of friends and acquaintances who thought I was unreasonable and unfair. I wrote, in part:
"I've written recently that the Common Core poses a slippery slope toward increased federal control of schools and schooling. This is a disconcerting prospect for those concerned that federal officials are too far removed from the daily realities of education and too prone to faddish enthusiasms to be helpful, and who fear federal efforts will yield more bureaucratization than school improvement.
It's especially troubling given how heavily Common Core proponents have relied on the table-pounding insistence that the enterprise was "state-led" and "voluntary." Indeed, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spent 2013 ridiculing those who dared to question this orthodoxy as a narrow-minded, uninformed, radical "fringe" Since the debate began in 2009, we've been repeatedly reassured that we needn't make too much of federal "incentives" to adopt the Common Core through Race to the Top or No Child Left Behind waivers, because those didn't signal any larger federal role. And each time Duncan championed the Common Core, the proponents would insist that this was a one-time thing -- and even say they wanted Duncan and the feds to stay out.
But times change. As if to illustrate the point, Duncan opted last week to use a White House gathering of college presidents -- who depend on federal largesse -- to tell them that they needed to be out there
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