Common Core: The Cost of Uniformity

Outcome Based Education: From Goals 2000, NCLB, RTTT, to Common Core

Well intentioned school reformers have been pushing the idea of outcome based education for decades. What is outcome based education? It's the idea that educating kids is like building a product on an assembly line. The idea that you get predictable quality controlled equality of outcome from every student by an equality of inputs. This has created a paradigm shift in education. Viewing the education of children in an unnatural way and transforming classrooms through the one-size-fits all standardization of education. 

It is not surprising that this idea got teeth after the creation of the Federal Department of Education. Consistent with the compulsory regulatory nature of government, the DOE began it's work by "encouraging" uniform regulation compliance in exchange for federal education dollars. This pursuit of equality of inputs has pushed all the education "reforms" that parents, teachers, and students are fed up with, including the newest, "Common Core". Each "reform" gets progressively more controlling as each one fails to attain the equality of inputs/equality of outputs that is desired.

I believe those who continue to push this idea have a warped view of reality that is seriously dangerous in practice. I struggle to understand their confused thought processes that are coloring everything our kids are taught overt and subliminal. They carry with them a strange dichotomy that pushes "equality" through uniformity, and simultaneously teach the relativity of multiculturalism that supposedly celebrates diversity. These competing messages make for messy minds and kids ill equipped to make sound judgments about themselves and the world around them.

They will not stop pushing their outcome based education philosophy because it is rooted in their misconceived notions of what "equality" is. They keep trying newer forms of "quality control" because in their view the obvious failures are the fault of never quite reaching the equality of inputs (making everyone the same). They say there are still too many schools doing things in too many different ways. Basically we don't have the conveyor belt model down to a science yet.

The pressure this has put on teachers (and by extension students) has changed education from the "lighting of a fire to the filling of a pail" and prompted schools to shift their mission from extending educational opportunity to all, to a promised "guarantee" of success for all" (Thus "No Child Left Behind) -- which of course fails not only because we are all different but because there is not one singular definition of success.

My sons middle school principle once explained it to me this way as he defended the paradigm shift -- because of the failures of parents "now days", schools have a greater responsibility to ensure students succeed in a more direct way. Instead of providing opportunities and then leaving it to the student, aided by their parents, to take hold of those opportunities, school today must “guarantee” that their students will learn. He said, In education today it is “no longer the mind set to give students opportunity,” but it has become, “I’m going to make you learn it.”

My school district’s mission statement exemplified this thinking. The statement said the mission of our schools “is to guarantee that each student develops the character traits and masters the knowledge and skills necessary for personal excellence and responsible citizenship…” Can schools guarantee that children will develop character and master knowledge? How is it done? It is done as my principal suggested, by taking the attitude, “I’m going to make you learn.”

There has always been a certain segment of society that has believed you can guarantee a certain outcome through compulsory means. Whether or not that is true, I believe it is a dangerous way to be teaching American children. John Adams said that, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” How can we instruct them in the principles of freedom through compulsion?

This changing paradigm is moving us into an era where children are not empowered to pursue excellence, and largely because they are no longer free to manage their own success or to suffer the consequences of their failure. How do the character traits of responsibility and self-motivation develop without experiencing failure and true life consequences? Can any lasting life lessons be learned in a controlled, sterile, forced environment?

The lofty plans of these "reformers" to transform education may achieve the result of universal C-level proficiency. But at what cost? At the cost of highly motivated, self-disciplined, hard working, creative, ambitious, happy children.

If we force “learning” – which in this new philosophy means successfully regurgitating information on standardized tests – we will teach children far more damaging lessons. We will teach them that they are not free. Or even worse, we will teach them that freedom is dangerous because it allows for failure. We will teach them that failure is an unacceptable part of life. Therefore, freedom must also be unacceptable.

This loss of freedom and failure teaches a twisted reality and confuses and harms our children. It removes true accountability and ultimately teaches them that they are weak and reliant on others for their success. In this climate, we raise lazy, entitled children who are unsatisfied with themselves and others and are far more likely to fail in the real world and be unable to recover from it.

We ought to remember the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If the philosophy of the school room in our generation is to seed mistrust in freedom and accountability then Lincoln's words are a true prediction of calamity for our government in the next.

National Standards Do NOT Require a National Curriculum: True or False?

A reader recently commented on my blog post, "What's Wrong With the Common Core," and I've decided to post a response because his point is so often repeated by supporters of the Common Core Stare Standards Initiative.

His comment refuted my claim that Common Standards push a Common Curriculum. He wrote, "National standards do NOT require a national curriculum. Study the CCSS and you will find for the most part skills and abilities outlined. In the area of language arts, for example, challenging writing skills are outlined. Whether a student in Oregon demonstrates these skills by writing a paper on arguing the validity of MLK assertions in his Birmingham jail letters or whether a student in Illinois writes similarly while studying women's rights, much freedom remains in the curriculum for how the challenging skills are acquired. Currently, I see the CCSS as standards which are challenging educators and students to move to high levels of universally recognized skill levels."

To defend my position that CCSS will lead to a Common Curriculum I would like to share a few logical real life examples of my own.

I often speak to teachers about education policy and how it translates into the everyday classroom. While speaking recently to a 6th grade English teacher (living in Maryland, a state who has fully implemented the Common Core) she expressed her immediate dislike of the changes made to the curriculum in her classroom since the state implemented the new ELA standards. Her chief concern was the decrease in literature and the increased focus on non-fiction reading which she says has made it more difficult to motivate reluctant readers and has shifted student writing skills to favor technical writing styles over creative writing.

This curriculum change is directly related to the Common Core State Standards and what unelected boards believed was "relevant to real life". While it is true what defenders of the Common Core say, the standards don't dictate this book over that, they certainly dictate that all schools de-emphasize literature regardless of what individual students, teachers, or schools feel is best in building strong readers and writers.

Another example of how the Common Core is pushing a national curriculum can be found in the uniform reports of parents in states who have adopted Common Core Math (reports you can read if you join education social media groups). These descriptions reflect an immediate and distinctive change in the curriculum and instructional methods used to teach math especially to the early elementary students.

This account is from a personal friend but her account echoes dozens of similar accounts from parents coast to coast: "He was coming home with this insane math that didn't actually teach him much about how to solve the problems. He COULD solve the problems using the methods they taught, but in the time it took him to answer ONE question FIVE different ways, he could've answered so many more! I had NO idea how to help him solve the problems, so if he got stuck, I'd have no idea how to help."

Need more evidence of how common standards push a common curriculum that will permeate every corner of your local school? Just do an Internet search for Common Core teacher helps and Common Core curriculum models. There are thousands of training videos for teachers to help them integrate Common Core into their curriculums and instruction methods. Achieve, the private company who published the Common Core has received federal grants to begin producing curriculum models for alignment.

Need more evidence? Read the market news reports for Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Saxon. Nearly all producers of curriculum and text books have already or are rapidly aligning their material to Common Core. This is widely discussed among Homeschool groups nationwide.

These companies are ecstatic about these national standards because it will mean producing one text book for every grade and subject instead of catering to schools on a state by state basis. The business model alone is proof that we will have a Common Curriculum as a result of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Former Maryland state Superintendent, Nancy Grasmick stated that the Common Core is a "national curriculum... No longer are education initiatives developed state by state, but in a model similar to European countries." Nancy Grasmick now works as a prominent professor at Towson University, a renown teachers collage, where she was appointed a Presidential Scholar for Innovation in Teacher and Leader Education. Her job is to orchestrate a "broad overhaul of the programs at the university" that will train teachers in Common Core alignment. She has spoken openly about how Common Core will fundamentally shape education and her role in reshaping teaching methodology to align with Common Core.

While it certainly is true that curriculum is taught with variation classroom to classroom and that children will differ in the books they read or the subjects they choose to write a report on, it is equally true that text books will become uniform throughout the country and teachers will be commonly trained to administer a common curriculum. Further, universities will align the education they give their aspiring teachers to reflect the methodologies of the Common Core State Standards.

I just don't see how people defending the Common Core can make a logical argument that standards don't drive curriculum. They certainly shape the test, and of course it naturally follows that in order to perform well on the test the curriculum must be tailored to the standards. To deny the real tangible connection between standards, testing, and curriculum -- and of greater impact the standardization of teacher training and methodology -- is a disingenuous argument at best, and manipulative at worst.