Why the common core won't improve education

Imagine you are attending a high-performing school; your school has high standardized test scores, high graduation rates, with a large percentage of graduates matriculating into college. Or imagine you are attending an under-performing school with low test scores and poor graduation rates. Or even imagine you are attending a mediocre school with mediocre results. In any case the adoption of the common core standards will not help you.

If you are in a high-performing school then you are already doing well and the common core will not help you. Your school is already graduating students and sending them to college.

If you are in an under-performing school then you are not meeting the current standards, you and your peers are behind grade level and the drop out rate is high. New standards will not help you.

If you are in a mediocre school then some of your students are doing well and some are doing poorly and neither the students who are doing well nor the students who are doing poorly would pretend to imagine that their success or failure is a result of standards adopted by the state.

Yet, bureaucrats, pundits, and bloggers, imagine that they can improve your school by adopting the common core standards. Teachers, administrators, parents, and students spend their days teaching, learning, and interacting in the schools. If their success could be enhanced and their failures could be succored by such standards why would they not have already implemented such standards in the district, building, classroom, and household?

The answer is simple, standards are not the problem. Students do not drop out of school because the standards adopted by the state are hazy. Students do not struggle to read, write, or learn arithmetic because the state has not properly articulated defined notions of reading, writing, and arithmetic. While the reasons why students drop out or fail to excel in academic endeavors are varied it is seldom, if ever, a result of standards.

Students drop out because they do drugs or have become pregnant. They may suffer from a learning disability or have experienced childhood trauma which adversely affects their education. Crime, transportation, and poverty are often causes for poor performance in school. Conversely students who do well come from parents of higher socioeconomic status. They have parents who care about them and support them. They are healthy and have had opportunities to develop physically, socially, and academically.

You cannot legislate educational success. Students' success is a result of their own actions, which are aided by parents and teachers. Students who do well are motivated and supported by those around them. Students who fail are unmotivated and/or hampered by poverty, trauma, and drugs. Much of the current discussion around the common core would be better spent on examining the historical and material successes and failures of our education system.