Sol Stern - Common Core: Yea & Nay

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M ANY CONSERVATIVES, perhaps a majority, now believe that the Common Core State Standards are one of the worst things to ever happen to American education. And why wouldnt they believe it? For the past three years, people have been bombarded by conservative media outlets and think tanks with scary-sounding allegations that the Obama administration illegally imposed the Common Core on the states and that the presidents power grab is leading to a dumbed-down, leftist curriculum in the schools.

Here are just a few of the urban legends spun by anti-Common Core writers and activists, followed by an actual fact or two:

President Obama is using the Common Core to move the countrys education system toward a federally controlled curriculum, says Stanley Kurtz, a leading conservative author. Moreover, according to Kurtz, the presidents old friend from the West Side of Chicago, 1960s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers was among those behind the federal plot. Another conservative education writer, Mary Grabar, claims that the Ayers educational brand or philosophy is all over Common Core.

Fact: The Common Core is not a curriculum. In any event, Ayers and his leftist education comrades vehemently oppose the standards.

In December 2012, this headline appeared above a Daily Telegraph story about the Common Core: Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird and J.D. Salingers Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of informational texts. According to the articles anonymous author, American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014. Despite its lack of a single source, the article was republished by the Drudge Report and then went viral on conservative media.

Fact: The Common Core doesnt rule out any of these works of fiction, or indeed any literary classic.

A paper published by a leading conservative think tank charges that the Obama administration knowingly violated federal statutes and the U.S. Constitution by imposing the Common Core Standards and their associated curricula on the states.

Fact: There is no federal imposition. States are completely free to say no thank you to the federal government, and seven have already done so. The claim of illegality is nothing more than a lawyers argument, unsupported by a single judicial authority.

Many of the purported exposs of the Common Core are hardly worth rebutting. Still, just to give readers a sense of the bizarro, heres an excerpt from one screed titled Common Core Pornography, published by Pajamas Media: Common Core reading materials are designed to groom young people and leave them vulnerable to molestation and sexual abuse.

Opposition to Common Core by the Tea Party and other activist groups has the feel of a populist revolt.

Its understandable that conservatives who believe such tall tales would want to see the education initiative they now call Obamacore rolled back. Opposition to Common Core by the Tea Party and other activist groups has the feel of a populist revolt. It has already succeeded in pressuring many Republican candidates and elected officials to reject the standards. Indiana and Oklahoma have withdrawn from the Common Core, and the program is in peril in several other states.

Most recently, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin called on his states legislature to dump Common Core and replace it with standards set by the people of Wisconsin. Bobby Jindal, Louisianas governor and a Republican presidential candidate, was for the Common Core before he was against it, apparently because he suddenly discovered it was all part of an Obama plot. All this is a sure sign that support for Common Core has become toxic for Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential primaries.

Conservatives should be careful what they wish for. They could find themselves being held responsible for undermining the only education reform of the past 40 years that has any chance of restoring traditional academic content to the classroom. They might also be remembered for using the big-lie technique and for smearing prominent conservatives who support the Common Core. Chester E. Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a supporter of national education standards for the past 25 years, is regularly denounced by activists for doing it for the money i.e., accepting a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support Fordhams work on national standards. One anti-Common Core writer even referred to Finn as Baghdad Bob, recalling Saddam Husseins propaganda minister.

If the Common Core fails (and it might), we will not soon discover better alternatives for public schools, as conservative activists imagine. Rather, Americans will remain stuck with the vast wasteland of a public-education system bereft of serious academic standards and a coherent curriculum. The nations K-12 schools will then continue turning out what Emory University Professor Mark Bauerlein has called the dumbest generation. (Thats the title of Bauerleins excellent 2008 book on the failure of the public schools to prepare young people for college-level work.)

One other likely result of Common Core failure is that the progressive-education movement, which has already inflicted great damage on schools, will retain its pervasive influence on what is taught (or, rather, not taught) in Americas classrooms. Conservatives who help bring down the Common Core will thus have given an unexpected gift to the education left. Ironically, most leftists also oppose the Common Core, but at least theyre smart enough to know that if the Common Core crashes, progressive-education ideology will still rule the classroom.

Regardless of whether one believes that the main threat to the Common Core Standards emanates from the left or the right, its demise will harm the countrys schools. As a conservative, I remain convinced that, faults and all, the Common Core still presents a golden opportunity and a challenge for states and school districts to rethink what is taught in their classrooms. The standards are more than just a list of learning objectives and skills that American students are expected to achieve by the end of each grade level. The most hopeful part of the new standards is that they reject the instructional malpractice that prevents public schools from fulfilling their historic mission of producing literate American citizens who know something about their countrys history and its republican heritage. Contrary to the conservatives complaints, the Common Core is, in fact, a document that the founders would approve.