Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that the Common Core State Standards may be an impetus toward education reform, not actually bring the reform itself.
He first said supporters have drunk the kool-aid:
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.
…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 (like charter schooling, new teacher evaluation systems, and school accountability).
Every time I ask about these things, I get watery, vague reassurances. Meanwhile, when I ask how exactly the Common Core is going to change teaching and learning, I’m mostly told that it’s going to finally shine a harsh light on the quality of suburban schools, shocking those families and voters into action.
Read the rest… Thoughts?