Making America Common

I am a retired high school English teacher and maintain a stake in education because I loved teaching and students, have two school-aged children myself, and understand that effective education forms the bedrock of civilization. It follows that without effective education we run the risk of becoming uncivilized by degrees. Nations mired in poverty, disease, and civil strife all share a lack of effective education if they have any education at all. Whether we like it or not, all of us are inextricably linked in varying degrees. How you are and what you do affects me, and how I am and what I do affects you. Your best self will find me in myriad ways and my best self will find you in as many. The flip side is obvious.

Much controversy surrounds effective education in America. However, before we delve into the controversy, I think we have to first define effective education from the bottom up rather than the top down. Administrators, officials, politicians, and so-called experts attempt to define a process they more or less know in theory but can't know it practice because they are not the ones who stand before students day in and day out for years on end. A few observations and book reads don't make experts in a classroom. Administrators who once taught, quit teaching. Posting recycled hackneyed mission statements in gilt frames, adopting and filing curriculum for curriculum's sake, sitting in on a class or two, and occasionally patting kids on the head is no redemption. Effective education begins in the classroom between teacher and student, all else is descriptive and ancillary. It works like this: A teacher, an expert in their subject who has passion and high expectations, delivers that knowledge to students in a variety of ways appropriate to grade level, in a venue that facilitates and enhances learning, checks and records students' understanding, and opens the door for all members of the education community. This paradigm should be gift wrapped in undying aid from all support systems which includes any system outside the classroom, particularly administrative offices all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But that's rarely, if ever, the case. If the classroom--the students and teacher--is not the top of the hierarchy in practice rather than rhetoric, then learning fails--and it's all too clear that that's what's happening.

Alarm bells sounded, not particularly among an apathetic public, but among politicians, education officials, education experts, and industry leaders in the US when The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), began testing 65 member and non-member nation's 15-year-old students' scholastic performance in mathematics, science, and reading. The test was first performed in 2000 and repeats every three years. The program's aim is to improve education policies and outcomes among participating nations. In 2000, the US ranked an average 17th among the 65 member nations and has since dropped to an average 29th today. Asian countries--China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan--consistently hold within the top 15 spots in all three categories: math, science, and reading. China has been number one in all three categories since 2009. Seems to me that Race to the Top, which prioritizes Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) is much a race to the top of the Great Wall. What about the millions of kids who don't want to run that race--or simply can't?

The faux-fix is Common Core, which is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy. These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live. On the surface, Common Core looks good. Who would argue with high academic standards, a hundred percent graduation rate, and success in college and career and "life?" Interestingly, Common Core's logo states "Preparing America's Students for College and Career" but leaves out life, which obviously encompasses myriad other worthwhile and noble pursuits outside college and career. The inclusion of "life" in the CC narrative and not the logo is, to my mind, evidence of an aside and merely PC window dressing. Not all K12 students aspire or have access to a college education. Common Core appears to ignore students who want to be plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, farmers, small business owners, artists of all kinds, food workers, a plethora of other pursuits that don't require a college degree--and the 14.5 million children who live in poverty in the US. It's almost as if the authors of Common Core believe that writing up, codifying, and branding a list of one-size-fits-all academic standards automatically inspires academic pursuit over non-academic pursuit and eliminates the poverty that pushes effective and fair education, much less a college education, out of reach of millions of children. Common Core is a top-down approach that appeases its authors and supporters while blinding them and the public to the underlying issues that have created America's dismal education system: poverty and urban decay, inequality, lack of parental involvement, public apathy, inadequate funding, overcrowded schools, poor teacher training, top-heavy administrations, fraudulent administrations, sports over academics, screen saturated kids, et. al.        

According to Common Core, the state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards was launched in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia, through their membership in the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. I'm curious, have governors, state leaders, state commissioners, chief state school officers, ever taught school? Why are teachers left out of the mix? Common Core states that The Common Core drafting process relied on teachers and standards experts from across the country. However, a perusal of the list of the CC standard's authors shows most of the writers had little K-12 teaching experience--and no current experience--but were, instead, tied to the testing industry, which will obviously profit from national standardized testing--not to mention the profit motive behind corporate America's interest in STEM education, which, at its core, is to prepare all students, including girls and minorities who are underrepresented in these fields, to be proficient in STEM subjects.

There's little doubt that rapid advances in technology require a STEM-educated workforce. However, STEM is inextricably tied to Common Core and Standardized Testing, which necessarily means that millions of kids will have to get over a bar not of their choosing--or one they can't get over at all due mainly to circumstances beyond their control. In fact, in fall 2015 The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tested a representative sample of high school seniors in the 2016 graduating class. After seven years of Common Core curriculum and assessment, the NAEP tests showed the average performance of high school seniors dropped in math and failed to improve in reading from 2013 to 2015. Worse, while scores improved for students in the highest percentile group in reading, they dropped in reading and math for students in the lower percentiles. These were the students that Common Core and the high-stakes testing regime were supposedly designed to support the most. States reporting CC standardized test scores in 2015 show that, on average, 70 percent of students fail the test. One would think that nearly eight years of the Common Core failed experiment would be sufficient proof that it is not the solution to America's dismal education system. How many more students must suffer the indignity of failure, blows to their self-esteem, and injury to their school communities at the hands of bureaucrats who don't know what's best for America's youth?

Common Core's chief problem is advertised in the title itself: Common! What is "common" about a nation where the Founders established a society that would embrace diversity and celebrate the differences that various cultures would bring to the United States? According to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, "America is a nation of nations, made up of people from every land, of every race and practicing every faith. Our diversity is not a source of weakness; it is a source of strength, it is a source of our success." True, the playing field that is America can be leveled, theoretically, in terms of equality--but it cannot be leveled in terms of ability, proclivity, desire, and dream.

The solution to America's failing education system is far from simple--but, at the very least, the solution should not move decisions about teaching and learning away from classrooms, educators, and school communities, only to put them in the hands of distant bureaucracies who often codify sanitized versions of history, politics, and culture that reinforce official myths while leaving out the voices, concerns, and realities of America's students and communities.



References are available in hyperlinks.