Common Core Education And More About Federal Government Control

[Ross]

First Common Core now this

College President: SAT
Is Part Hoax,
Part Fraud

Leon Botstein

The president of Bard College says recent changes to the SAT are motivated by the competition that College Board has experienced with its arch rival, the ACT, rather than any serious soul searching.

The changes recently announced by the College Board to its SAT college entrance exam bring to mind the familiar phrase "too little, too late." The alleged improvements are motivated not by any serious soul searching about the SAT but by the competition the College Board has experienced from its arch rival, the ACT, the other major purveyor of standardized college entrance exams. But the problems that plague the SAT also plague the ACT. The SAT needs to be abandoned and replaced. The SAT has a status as a reliable measure of college readiness it does not deserve. The College Board has successfully marketed its exams to parents, students, colleges and universities as arbiters of educational standards. The nation actually needs fewer such exam schemes; they damage the high school curriculum and terrify both students and parents.

The blunt fact is that the SAT has never been a good predictor of academic achievement in college. High school grades adjusted to account for the curriculum and academic programs in the high school from which a student graduates are. The essential mechanism of the SAT, the multiple choice test question, is a bizarre relic of long outdated twentieth century social scientific assumptions and strategies. As every adult recognizes, knowing something or how to do something in real life is never defined by being able to choose a "right" answer from a set of possible answers (some of them intentionally misleading) put forward by faceless test designers who are rarely eminent experts. No scientist, engineer, writer, psychologist, artist, or physician—and certainly no scholar, and therefore no serious university faculty member—pursues his or her vocation by getting right answers from a set of prescribed alternatives that trivialize complexity and ambiguity.

And why do we remain addicted to the College Board's near monopoly on tests? Why do they have an undue influence on college placement? These tests actually violate the basic justification for tests. First, despite the changes, these tests remain divorced from what is taught in high school and what ought to be taught in high school. Second, the test taker never really finds out whether he or she got any answer right or wrong and why. No baseball coach would train a team by accumulating an aggregate comparative numerical score of errors and well executed plays by each player, rating them, and then send them the results weeks later. When an error is committed it is immediately noted; the reasons are explained and the coach, at a moment in time close to the event, seeks to train the player how not to do it again.

What purpose is served by putting young people What purpose is served by putting young people through an ordeal from which they learn nothing? Is the SAT a reasonable representation of the ideals and benefits of learning? No, it makes a mockery of them. Given the possibilities explicit in modern technology, a college entrance examination could be developed in which the test takers in real time could be told immediately if they got the right or wrong answer and guided to a program that might help them understand why they got a question right or wrong. Such a test would be like a chess match, where the clock stops after a move is made. And although the pressure of time—the need to excel under pressure—applies legitimately to pilots, generals and surgeons, is it really so important? Why not give students the time to think, research, and learn as they answer serious questions whose answers demand careful thought and knowledge? Those are the skills that are rewarded in college, and in life.

What is needed is not minor so called improvements to the SAT, but an entirely new generation of testing instruments that utilize modern technology not only to measure the performance of our students but also teach them.

That being said, the new changes to the SAT are harmless. No one will be asked arcane ugly words that have no use. No one will be penalized for guessing, which is a relief since intelligent guessing is a vital life skill that needs encouragement. (It is also nice to see that the College Board has chosen to emulate Bard's new alternative essay entrance exam that has students read important historic texts and write on them.) The changes to the math section are welcome since they turn that part of the SAT more to fundamental areas of quantitative reasoning.

These modest reforms will do little to stem the rising tide against the College Board and its SAT. There is more and more resistance to pressuring students and parents into paying money to take a senseless exam that claims to be objective when in fact the only persistent statistical result from the SAT is the correlation between high income and high test scores. The richer one is, the better one does on the SAT. Nothing that is now proposed by the College Board breaks the fundamental role the SAT plays in perpetuating economic and therefore educational inequality.

The justification behind the SAT has been that it is an objective instrument of ability to succeed in college, when it is not. But the truth is less principled. The SAT is used by selective institutions to help them sort applicants and justify dismissing many from consideration. SAT scores also have become an integral part of another money-making racket—college rankings. The victim in this unholy alliance between the College Board (a profit-making business masquerading as a not-for-profit educational institution serving the public good) and our elite institutions of higher education are students and our nation's educational standards.

The commonsensical truth is that the only legitimate test is one where a question is put forward and an answer required with no options or hints. The one major reform in the new SAT seems to be the dropping of a required essay. This is ironic because the one thing colleges need to know in their admissions process is how well a student can think, construct an argument, and persuade. Asking  Asking a student to sit down and write essays in an examination setting might be an excellent way to discover an applicant's command of language and thought. This one potentially useful piece of evidence has been made optional.

The SAT will continue in its revised form to face challenges. It is part hoax and part fraud, albeit a profitable one. The College Board, however, is not entirely to blame. David Coleman is to be admired for trying to rescue an outdated, sinking ship. The real responsibility for our sorry state of affairs regarding college entrance examinations rests with our colleges and universities themselves. The elite institutions have willingly supported an alliance with the College Board to make their own lives easier, and we Americans seem to have accepted this owing to our misplaced love affair with standardized testing and rankings as the proper means to ensure educational excellence.

The time has come for colleges and universities to join together with the most innovative software designers to fundamentally reinvent a college entrance examination system. We need to come up with one that puts applicants through a rigorous but enlightening process showing what they can and cannot do, and what they know and do not know, all in an effort to reverse the unacceptable low standard of learning among high school graduates we now tolerate and to inspire perspective college students about the joy of serious learning.

Leon Botstein is the president of Bard College and the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra.

http://time.com/15199/college-president-sat-is-part-hoax-and-part-fraud/

[Diane Amberg]

Ross..... Bard, of all places? Considering what they charge...they can say what they want about anything they want. Their graduates don't end up any better off than anyone else for the money they spend and the huge debts they can be saddled with. It's a good school academically, but is very loosey- goosey in what the kids learn and how they learn.  Sort of Montessori in approach. If that's what you want, (They are very fussy about who they accept, so they are guaranteed a good product.) for huge money, go for it. No way I'd be footing  60+ thousand $ a year for a good, but not exceptional, college experience.  Would you?
By the way, not all good schools require SATs any more. It's been known for some time how outdated they are. Some will accept SATs, some taken multiple times to boost the scores, or essays and portfolios of student work. We had one shot at the PSATs as juniors and one shot at SATs as seniors. Period.

[Ross]

Ross..... Bard, of all places? Considering what they charge...they can say what they want about anything they want. Their graduates don't end up any better off than anyone else for the money they spend and the huge debts they can be saddled with. It's a good school academically, but is very loosey- goosey in what the kids learn and how they learn.  Sort of Montessori in approach. If that's what you want, (They are very fussy about who they accept, so they are guaranteed a good product.) for huge money, go for it. No way I'd be footing  60+ thousand $ a year for a good, but not exceptional, college experience.  Would you?
By the way, not all good schools require SATs any more. It's been known for some time how outdated they are. Some will accept SATs, some taken multiple times to boost the scores, or essays and portfolios of student work. We had one shot at the PSATs as juniors and one shot at SATs as seniors. Period.

And I suppose your education provides you with all the intelligence to put down a man that holds the position of president of Bard College and the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. And also makes you an expert on Bard College. How many colleges have you been President of?

Well, I may be uneducated, but I understand, a man or a woman can not run a college and graduate people because they are stupid. Your opinion about any college is not what this thread is about.

But the point --- really --- is "The Dumbing Down of America".
The subject is not Bard College or the President of the College, please focus on the subject matter.

"The nation actually needs fewer such exam schemes; they damage the high school curriculum and terrify both students and parents."  The SAT's are basically a money maker for the industry and not much else can you understand that? Or is the guy just plain stupid?

All the governments federal and states recognize that that teaching standards are way down and now states are fighting the Common Core that they were lured into, with the promise of money in a contest (which was stinkin thinkin) and now the SAT's standards are being lowered by industry to match the failing system. I could care less if you think the guy that wrote this article is a complete imbecile, it is very good information and is on point.

Thank you!

[Diane Amberg]

Somehow what you read isn't what I wrote. Bard is one of the smaller liberal arts schools that kids from here consider when they are picking a college to go to. They offer mostly soft subjects, not so much  the meat and potatoes courses ,like chemistry or engineering. I'm in no way being critical, just stating fact.  It has nothing to do with me.  I've always been pro post high school education ,no matter what kind.
     Do you understand the process of applying to a college, or choosing one that is a good fit? Some colleges will probably always want some form of standard test, for a number of reasons. Others, as I already said, are depending less on tests and more on portfolios, interviews and such. BUT there has to be a solid reason for both accepting or denying an application. A parent who demands an explanation for why their child was denied acceptance is owed a solid explanation.
Local community colleges are another thing entirely, and a very good education for many for the price.
Being able to stand academic pressure, time management, reading ability, knowing how to take various kinds of tests, etc. are examples of what colleges who still depend on SATs are looking for. If that doesn't suit, the student can apply elsewhere.  In many cases, with two similar applicants, the one with the better score is the one accepted.That is not always true.Each college is different in how they manage the application process...and the prospective students know that when they apply. Many Admissions offices base their final decision on a personal interview, regardless of the test score.( One of my girlfriends just retired form the UD admissions office...talk about hearing stories over the course of her career there. No names of course.)
U D bases a lot of their decision on the attitude of the parents. Did they come tour the school? Ask questions? Offer information? Seem interested? Most schools want kids who have something to offer the whole college experience, not just what the kids get from taking the classes. The colleges hold all the cards. As far as college presidents...do you know what they are for?   PR! School promotion, glad handing and fund raising. That really is their primary job and they are paid huge bucks to do it well. That is not a criticism, just the truth.
Yes, I expanded this past the original topic, just as you so often do. My privilege.

[Ross]

More B.S. on Education.

This has been proven to be the Biggest B.S. Lie ever!

But why hold anyone accountable,

ever,

for anything?

Especially teachers.

It's the parents fault they are poor,

right?

Rochester union says
poor kids can't learn,
so teachers shouldn't be
held accountable

March 11, 2014

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Poor students don't learn as well as rich students, and Rochester teachers shouldn't be evaluated on how their poverty-stricken students perform on state tests.

That's the sad argument the Rochester Teachers Association is making in a recent lawsuit it filed against New York Regents and the state's education department in the wake of 2012-13 state test results.

"The suit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by New York State United Teachers on behalf of the RTA and more than 100 Rochester teachers, argues the State Education Department did not adequately account for student poverty in setting student growth scores on state tests in grades 4-8 math and English language arts," according to a press release on the NYSUT website.

"In addition, (the state education department) imposed rules for Student Learning Objectives and implemented evaluations in a way that made it more difficult for teachers of economically disadvantaged students to achieve a score of 'effective' or better.

"As a result, the lawsuit alleges the Regents and (state education department) violated teachers' rights to fair evaluations and equal protection under the law."

In other words, kids from low income families can't learn, and teachers should not be expected to help them learn. What a pathetic, cowardly excuse for poor performance. (emphasis is mine)

The union contends that observation-based evaluations done by principals show 98 percent of Rochester teachers rated "effective" or "highly effective," while student growth scores (student improvement on standardized tests over a year) resulted in about one-third of Rochester teachers receiving an overall rating of "developing" or "ineffective" in 2013.

The union believes the state isn't properly compensating for the fact that 90 percent of Rochester students live in poverty. The discrepancy between the principal evaluations and overall ratings serve as the evidence, according to NYSUT.
 

But many education reform advocates likely would have a much different take on the data. For years, teacher evaluations in most school districts consisted of principal evaluations only, and the vast majority of educators received stellar reviews.

Teachers unions want the public to believe that means all teachers are great at their job, but the reality is teachers typically performed well because the evaluations were scheduled well in advance, so they knew when to put their best foot forward. The reviews represented a one-day snapshot of the best each teacher had to offer, but provided little insight into teachers' overall effectiveness.

In recent years, states across the country shifted focus to a more performance-driven system, urged in large part by federal incentives through President Obama's Race to the Top education reforms, to get a better gauge of how teachers actually impact student learning. Many states, like New York, tie teacher evaluations in part to student test scores.

Now the public is starting to see the truth: not all teachers are created equal. The discrepancy between the teachers who received effective principal reviews and those whose students tested poorly represent the teachers who skated by under the old system.

Of course, instead of accepting reality and helping those educators improve their craft, the teachers unions would rather blame the poor performance on student poverty and sue the state to prevent Rochester schools from holding its less effective teachers accountable.

The case also highlights a fundamental difference in the mindset of union officials and real educators: union officials don't believe poor children have the same capacity for learning as their wealthier peers, while true educators know all students are capable learners with the right combination of high expectations, focused instruction, and encouragement.

http://eagnews.org/rochester-union-says-poor-kids-cant-learn-so-teachers-shouldnt-be-held-accountable/

[Diane Amberg]

Poppy cock. Of course poor kids can learn. They are less likely to have the additional resourses at home that middle class kids have, such as extra resource books ,educational trips and they  aren't usually as strong at already knowing HOW to learn, but a good teacher can overcome that. Some of my best students were very poor.  The difference was the parents' attitude. They knew how important their kids' education was and supported it in any way they could. They made themselves available to me, didn't skip parent conferences and made sure their kids did their home work. It makes a huge difference.

[Ross]

Poppy cock. Of course poor kids can learn. They are less likely to have the additional resourses at home that middle class kids have, such as extra resource books ,educational trips and they  aren't usually as strong at already knowing HOW to learn, but a good teacher can overcome that. Some of my best students were very poor.  The difference was the parents' attitude. They knew how important their kids' education was and supported it in any way they could. They made themselves available to me, didn't skip parent conferences and made sure their kids did their home work. It makes a huge difference.

You sound just like the union lawyers, of course you say they can learn and then continue with the same old schtick.  Of course they are poor and have so many problems at home. No extra books, no this, no that and maybe parents will be at parent conferences, maybe not.

Everything you said was dumb Kids come from  poor homes, just differently and that parents are responsible to teacher.

Teachers are not the parents boss ---- what an attitude.

Would you also say that a teacher should not be held responsible for what is produced in his or her classroom

How would you measure a teachers job performance in the class room?
Give her extra points for each poor kid in his or her class room, because they can not be taught.

What a cop out.

There are plenty of bad teachers in the class rooms. Of course, I believe they are general related to someone important.

I'll tell you who can not be taught, the highly educated that think they know everything. I just read an interesting remark by a man about Obamacare, this took place in Washington State, " Big news flash: Yakima County has exceeded its target for Washington State's goal for FREE Obamacare Medicaid sign-ups. The article is saying it like it was a huge accomplishment, and I suppose it is if one considers the rest of the country's botched programs. However, it only means to me that we have a HUGE problem - we also admit with that "accomplishment" the largest number of dirt-poor population and therefore qualified people, (citizens or not) that need Medicaid welfare. This is NOT an accomplishment, but a statement of failure - we should be ASHAMED that we have so many who qualify for this taxpayer-financed giveaway.

It is a sad time when we are bragging about setting records for how many people we have signed up on welfare benefits, but we also have the dubious distinction of having the record for the LOWEST election turnout in the state as well at a miserable 36%!"

It is a sad state of affairs to protect poor teaching on the back of poor children, don't you think?
Or is it a poor teacher is  better than no teacher.

[Warph]

Go back to move forward from Common Core Standards

March 5, 2014

WICHITA, Kan. – Common Core. Two words that make the "Who is the best Kansas college basketball team" debate seem downright tame.

Common Core finds its way into just about any education policy discussion and pugilists on both sides start to jab.

As with most questions of public policy, Common Core (CC) certainly started out with the best of intentions but has become just another roadblock between Kansas children and their future success. At one point the saving grace of CC was the promise of high, transparent standards by which Kansas schools would be graded. However, the baggage that now accompanies those standards, with no promise of them remaining high, is too much and Kansas should return to the state performance standards we had prior to passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Also interesting, CC recently underwent a name change but remain CC is spirit and fact – They're now called the Kansas College and Career Readiness Standards.

The last federal intervention, NCLB, is where any notion of CC being a state initiative went off the rails. Assume for a moment that CC supporters are correct in saying it was initially a state-led effort and that the Feds jumped onto an already-moving train. The reality is that most states only got on board to CC when they were offered a federal waiver from the impossible mandates of NCLB – 100% student proficiency by 2014 at the hazard of federal education dollars. Not to mention federal enticements of more money in the 2009 "stimulus" bill. Kansas applied for the stimulus' "Race to The Top" money but didn't receive it while our state has received a waiver from NCLB. Minutes from Kansas Board of Education meetings show that Kansas was signing onto the standards during the same period as the "enticements" were being offered.

That is the kind of "voluntary" decision that only Michael Corleone could love. To think that the federal government will not use further enticements and the power they already have to wield influence on CC disregards both common sense and recent history. We need look no further than NCLB to hear Washington say they will not affect the classroom. But, you would be hard pressed to find a teacher who does not bemoan NCLB as interfering in their ability to teach.

If NCLB was an unwarranted, unprecedented federal intrusion into the classroom why welcome more of the same with Common Core?

To believe that CC will remain state-led with Kansas able to control our own destiny is to ignore the simple experience of getting a few friends to agree on where to eat dinner. Magnify this phenomenon to 40-some states trying to agree on education standards and we begin to see where Kansas control may be eroded. It is also hard to imagine that what is in the standards will not ultimately dictate curriculum and teaching. How is CC any different than the NCLB refrain of "teaching to the test"? Because, we know that what is tested is what is taught?

Even college-bound private school students or homeschoolers will feel the weight of CC as the ACT and SAT are both being aligned to Common Core standards.
Recent CC test results in New York and Kentucky also show the "high standards" are under attack. New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year said that "The New York Common Core test results are the fruit of a poisonous tree." While the leading teachers union in New York recently called for a CC moratorium in the face of high-stakes testing. If CC can survive these early attacks, we will likely be left with CC following the course of NCLB, which, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says, "led to a dumbing down of standards."

Good thing, then, that Kansas already has our pre-NCLB standards on the shelf. Surely, any cost to update those would be no more than the cost of implementing CC standards and would ensure Kansas-led decision making. Suffice it to say, Kansas' pre-NCLB standards required "Proficiency with difficult, rigorous and formidable material..." and would be a step in the right direction from where Kansas standards are currently.

The evidence is overwhelming; Kansas should pass on CC and return to our pre-NCLB standards. Those standards are on the shelf while Common Core will corrode public, private, and home schools. We'd also be sticking our head in sand to believe that Kansas will stay in control of K-12 education with a 40-some state consortium and the Feds already interfering with this "state-led initiative."

Authored by James Franko – Kansas Policy Institute

[Ross]

Isn't that convenient Warph!

Re-Brand or Re-Name it in order to confuse !

A lot like the West Elk Grade School we voted "NO" on.

And what appears to be an attempt at building Professional Sports Arena under the disguise of a FEMA approved Storm Shelter to protect the children. And now the new gymnasium (if built) will be a grade school gymnasium with no bleachers and a grade school gymnasium with no score board just little kids basket ball hoops. Storm Shelter ---- Huh-uh. The smoke screen burnt down. LOL

What has been called grade school class rooms since the last School Board Meeting are now only to be referred to as class rooms.

The half a million dollars worth Howard eye sore often referred to portable class rooms have been inquired about by the teachers. They must not be that big an eyesore or all the unsafe in these Kansas winds! HUH!

The School Board Continues undeterred by the knowledge that their phony survey failed them by not producing the results they desired. They have spent over $28,000 plus on Architect's with little to show for the money. Now they are going to spend real close to $3,000 to prove what they already know. They have said it at many School Board Meetings at a few Special School Board Meetings! What it that?  A "NO" vote.

So, when do these supposedly people with Higher Educations wise up?
When do these supposed leaders of the community, lead with some common sense?
Op's my bad education in common sense is not a college subject is it?

These supposed leaders of the community lack either the

Knowledge of How
A
Formal
Public
School Board Meeting
Should be Run
or
Lack
Knowledge
of Protocol
Or they just
Plain

Don't care

About the

Taxpayers or Voters

ONE LITTLE BIT.

The School Board President said. "My children will not have the opportunity to experience a new gymnasium."  Well sir, if indeed that is what this is all about, reach deep into your wallet and build one in your own back yard for them.

[Ross]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Changes in the SAT, announced on March 5 by the College Board, adjust the test to the ongoing decline in the nation's public schools.

Minding the Campus
Minding the Campus is dedicated to the revival of intellectual pluralism and the best traditions of liberal education at America's universities.


WASHINGTON, D.C. – Changes in the SAT, announced on March 5 by the College Board, adjust the test to the ongoing decline in the nation's public schools.

The new test lightens vocabulary and math and eliminates the penalty for bad guessing. The new SAT grows out of and accommodates the Common Core State Standards, the controversial set of K-12 standards adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.

The Common Core's standards amount to an assault on the college curriculum. That's because colleges will have to adapt to what the Common Core teaches–and what it fails to teach. It teaches a mechanical way of reading that is poorly suited to literature, philosophy, history, and the rest of the liberal arts.  It also fails to teach the math students need to begin a college-level curriculum in the sciences.

Complaints

The Common Core has aroused a broad-based and sometimes furious reaction among Americans across the political spectrum. The furor, however, isn't yet focused on what the Common Core does to a college education. Rather, the complaints focus on the immediate harm to students and to schools. The arguments against Common Core have proliferated almost beyond counting, but the short version is something like this:

The Race to the Middle. The Common Core promises higher academic standards in the nation's schools.  In some cases it will deliver on that promise, but in other cases, the Common Core actually lowers standards.  The whole thing is an experiment in social leveling.

Goodbye Local Control.  The Common Core transfers a lot of power over the nation's schools from local districts and state governments to the federal government.  The transfer is deceptive and probably illegal. The deception comes from the Common Core being sold as "voluntarily" adopted by the states. The illegality comes from statutory law that prohibits the federal government's involvement in creating school curricula.

Big Brother. The Common Core is designed to collect and aggregate an immense amount of data on individual students' academic performance. Critics worry that this will eventuate in detailed federal files on everyone who attends school.

Other objections focus on the Common Core's utilitarian goals.  Common Core emphasizes "informational texts" at the expense of literature, promotes out-of-context reading, and significantly lowers expectations for students in math. The Common Core is designed to expedite the way students work, and it minimizes just about everything else schools might be expected to do, such as develop creativity, foster a fullness of mind, and strengthen character.

Common Core was sold to the states as a way to make students "college ready."  The sales pitch was that our nation's schools do a mediocre to poor job prepping students for the next leg of the journey to adulthood–the leg that will take them through Chem 101, English Lit, or whatever college "first years" now take.

Like all good sales pitches, this one was grounded in truth. Our schools don't do an especially good job at preparing students for college.  As anyone (including me) who has taught freshmen at a "selective" college or university can attest, a great many students arrive at college with no capacity to write a short essay.  Many cannot reliably compose even a grammatical sentence.  Their knowledge of history and literature is generally many steps below what students twenty years ago brought with them, and twenty years ago was a big step down from twenty years before that. Preparation in mathematics and basic science has plummeted even further.

That said, each semester a handful of students would turn out to be capable and disciplined writers who were pretty well-informed on the things we college teachers used to be able to take for granted.  Some are from elite academies or exceptional public schools.  But a growing number are homeschooled.

So when Common Core's proponents announced that they were serious about remaking our public schools into places where students would graduate "college ready," the American public was primed to say, "It's about time."

Ready or Not

But a good sales pitch isn't the same as a good product.  As we have gotten to see the Common Core up close, it looks less and less likely to yield "college ready students" in the way we hoped.

The Common Core will in all likelihood improve education for some students.  How many, what percentage, where, at what cost, and with what drawbacks?  The whole thing has been rushed into place so quickly that no one really knows. But a few things have become clear:

Locking In Mediocrity.  The Obama administration's way of fast-tracking the Common Core through state approval was the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top." To qualify to get into the competition for these funds, states had to agree in advance that students who complete a Common Core curriculum would be admitted to public colleges and universities as full-fledged students. Such students will be exempt from having to take remedial courses because, after all, the state has pre-certified them as "college ready."  What part of "college ready" do those professors not understand?  If the students aren't "ready" to write college essays, so much the worse for college essays.

I doubt that the bureaucrats and state legislators who approved this stipulation gave a moment's thought to what this arrangement really means. Thanks to various "preference" programs in college admissions–for racial minorities principally but also for athletes and other "special interests"–colleges admit many students who are mismatched to the prevailing level of academic rigor. The usual recourse for these students has been an effort to repair the gaps in their learning through remedial courses, which are usually non-credit courses, i.e. they don't count towards graduation. They are on-ramps for students who are not yet ready for freshman courses.

The Common Core, in a stroke, abolishes this option. If a college admits students who are mismatched, it will have no choice but to mainstream those students into regular courses.

Colleges could decide not to admit such students at all or admit them and watch them fail. But given higher education's steely commitment to using college admissions to advance its ideas of "social justice," most colleges will simply lower academic standards across the board.  Note that this cannot stop with freshman year.  Once a college injects "underprepared" (i.e. incompetent) students into mainstream introductory courses and adjusts those courses to avoid embarrassingly high failure rates, the consequences will propagate through all the subsequent courses.

Subterfuges will necessarily evolve.  Colleges will create or expand "honors" programs for students who meet what were formerly the basic standards.  Remedial courses will be relabeled as regular courses, even though everyone will know they are remedial. Untalented students will be shunted even more than they are now to soft majors in fields such as African-American studies, sociology, and women's studies.

But such subterfuges will be targets for severe criticism by the academic left on the grounds that they discriminate. The emergence too conspicuously of a two-tier system would be denounced as racist, classist, anti-immigrant, and so on. The only viable choice for most colleges and universities will be to dilute the curriculum.  The Common Core is thus set to become a bulldozer aimed at leveling what remains of intellectual excellence in American higher education.

Remedial courses, I might add, have themselves become a blight in American higher education, but that's a topic for another day.

Locking Out Liberal Learning.  The Common Core emphasizes how to glean information from the written word–and other media as well. The catchphrase that the Common Core uses for the written words that students will mine for information is "informational texts."  Think of the recipe on the back of the soup can for turning soup into a tasty casserole. But not all "informational texts" present themselves as instructions. "Information" can be gleaned from all sorts of texts, including picture books, novels, poems, YouTube videos, works of history, and speeches by notables such as Abraham Lincoln.

The trouble is that if you see the written word as mainly a device for conveying information, you miss many other things that writing can do. It stirs emotions; it points to truths beyond itself; alternatively, it conveys lies; it may possess beauty or it may be ugly; it can cause us to ask questions that the text itself does not ask; it possesses implications; it belongs to and participates in a larger context; it taps into secret memories; it rallies us to public causes.

The Common Core slights all of these purposes.  That is not to say it ignores them entirely. It gives some small space to mythology and literature–a space that retracts year by year as students progress through the Common Core.

Why should this matter? We should surely want students to be able to read recipes on soup cans and to extract important information from "texts."  That's a useful skill.  But it is a skill that, cultivated at the expense of a more well-rounded form of literacy, cuts students off from the foundation of a liberal education. Students who know how to read "informational texts," and to read every piece of writing as though it is an "informational text," are ill-prepared for Plato's Republic or Shakespeare's King Lear. Indeed, they are ill-prepared for Goodnight Moon.

This gap between how the Common Core teaches students to read and the kind of reading required in a liberal education is especially worrisome at a time when colleges have to a great extent abandoned their old core curricula.  Students these days are lulled with the illusion that they can become "critical thinkers" by studying whatever catches their interest, rather than what their colleges have deemed the most important works. That whole do-it-yourself approach puts a premium on the capacity of college students to read with their eyes wide open and to get to places well beyond the "information" that a "text" lays out.

With the Common Core, we will have the worst of both worlds: students who come equipped to read mainly for information and college curricula designed for students equipped mainly for independent intellectual synthesis.

Watering Down Math.  Common Core defers the teaching of algebra to the 9th grade.  As a consequence, it will be difficult for schools to offer pre-calculus to students before they finish high school. There simply isn't enough time left in the curriculum to reach that level, and the Common Core poses other obstacles as well. Trigonometry is barely broached. Geometry follows an eccentric path. The result is that students who go to college hoping to study the physical sciences, computing, engineering, economics, and other math-heavy fields will be handicapped.  Or they will have to scramble before they get to college to supplement what their high schools offer.

Some students will find their ways around these obstacles, but many won't, and that will leave colleges and universities with few good choices.  The likeliest path will be to reduce the rigor of their science programs to accommodate students who have to spend their first year catching up on mathematics that used to be taught in high school.

Everybody acknowledges how important the STEM fields are for America's future–and few are more vocal about this than Bill Gates. One of the ironies of the Common Core is that its most lavish-spending advocate is contributing to the further erosion of our nation's strength in this area.  Perhaps it is no wonder that Mr. Gates is also a major supporter of increasing the number of H-1B visas for foreign nationals who have expertise in science and engineering.

What Else?

The Common Core will not make an appreciable number of students more "college ready." It may smooth the way, however, for more students to be admitted to college. President Obama and Michelle Obama have recently ratcheted up the campaign that Obama announced back in his first address to Congress in February 2009–to make America the nation with the highest percentage of college graduates. The pitch that "everyone should go to college" has been a favorite of American politicians for a long time. It is, on its face, silly. To achieve anything like it would require obliterating academic standards and wasting untold trillions of dollars. But the phrase somehow strokes the national ego.

The Common Core feeds this fantasy and the illusions buried within, namely, that a college degree is a ticket to personal prosperity and that having lots of people who have college degrees necessarily makes the nation more competitive in the global economy. For reference: the nation that currently has the greatest percentage of college degrees in its population is that economic powerhouse, Russia. Moreover, the nation with the strongest economy in Europe–Germany–has about half the percentage of college-degreed people as the United States does.

So the effort to grease the skids from public school to college is founded on a mistake.  But it is a mistake that Americans somehow cherish and won't easily relinquish.  We would go a lot further towards both a greater degree of personal prosperity and national competitiveness if we really did improve K-12 education–not with the idea of making our schools operate better as conveyor belts to our languishing higher education institutions, but with the idea of fostering a true spirit of educational achievement among students, parents, and teachers. I know.  Easier said than done.

The task at hand, however, is to stop the Common Core before it can inflict more harm.  The battle will probably be waged over the issues I listed earlier–the race to the middle, goodbye local control, big brother–during the races for public office in which the Common Core becomes an issue.  But the Common Core is also an assault on higher education and as that becomes clear perhaps the strange coalition of opponents will grow stranger still.  I await the rallies where Tea Party activists unite in uncommon cause with English and History profs.

http://eagnews.org/what-the-common-core-will-do-to-colleges/