Common Core (Predictably) Falling Apart
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Politico reports today that Georgia has become the fifth state to withdraw from the Common Core standards project after fully understanding the additional expenses involved in administering the new standardized tests, as well as realizing the enlargment of the federal role in education that will come along with adoption of the Common Core. Considering that other states are already considering opting out (including Florida, home of former Governor Jeb Bush, a big Common Core supporter), and counting the four states that chose at the beginning not to be part of the Common Core (which included Texas, the great driver of textbook content for the nation), the list is approaching death-spiral territory.
I predicted this a while ago. Essentially, the Common Core is "NCLB-light." Great taste: The standards, from what I can tell, are consistent with the better state standards that exist. The tests, also from what I can tell, seek to go beyond the overly formulaic and reductionist forms of testing that exist in most states today. Less filling: But none of this matters. Why? Because teaching a more rigorous curriculum is harder, and therefore more expensive. And testing in more authentic ways is more labor-intensive, both on the test-administration side and on the test-scoring side, and therefore much more expensive. At present, standards development and test development are funded, but not test administation, scoring, and reporting, let alone teacher training. And most importantly, no existing state education funding rides on the decision whether to adopt the Common Core or not.
Putting aside its many, many flaws for a moment, NCLB's main successes (and it was successful in causing many school districts to finally start paying at least some attention to disadvantaged and minority students' test scores) came from the fact that it was enacted mostly as an amendment to Title I, meaning that the failure to adhere to NCLB would (at least theoretically) put at risk federal Title I funding, which is very substantial. Many states hated NCLB (really, most states hated it), but they went along with it because there were consequences for noncompliance--the potential loss of lots of funding. Not so with the Common Core, which is supported only by a (relatively small) set of grants, most of which have gone to the testing/textbook companies and their agents which have developed the standards and tests. It is very easy to see why states are now beginning to say "No thanks." This is a new set of more rigorous demands on instruction and assessment, decoupled from any real consequences for the states themselves for noncompliance. I'm actually amazed that more states have not opted out yet.
Standardization of curriculum and assessment (whether at the state or federal level) requires a coercive mandate. In federal education legislation, that means coming up with a big enough pile of money to induce the states to act in the way desired in exchange for the money. Congress is broken today, so I don't see that happening. Common Core was probably the best that could have been done in this environment, and having a set of well-developed standards at least gives the states something they can adopt, adapt, and draw from, but I doubt it will go much farther than that when the other costs become apparent.