Barack Obama

White House Statement

February 22, 2010

goal of having all children, regardless of circumstance, achieve at high levels. As noted  above,  aligning  these  standards  with  curriculum  and  assessments  is  also  a key part of the federal approach. In the Blueprint, the common standards are specifically required to be 'high' (all students must be career and college ready), as contrasted with 'low' standards  such  as  those  of  the  1970s,  which  only  required students to achieve minimum basic skills. President Obama‘s letter transmitting the Blueprint to Congress  says that 'we must raise the expectations for our students, for our schools and for ourselves' to prevent other nations from out-competing us. The National Governors Association  and  Council  of  Chief  State  School  Officers  also  assert  that  international  competitiveness  requires  common  core  standards.Think  tanks  and  business organizations routinely link standards to economic competitiveness. 

The Equity Argument 
The equity argument is made by, among others, the 

Education Trust, which asserts that educational equity demands uniform, high-quality, standardsbased curricula for all. It points to the clear history in the United States of curricular stratification and disparate opportunities; if there are different paths for different students, poor children will be given the inferior path.This view is supported by Joan Richardson, editor of Phi Delta Kappan: "Standards are an essential step toward ensuring equity and high quality learning for all children everywhere.

In this view, 'common core' standards will 

allow broad based sharing of what works within and across schools, districts and states.  Thus,  efficiency  will  be  increased.  Further,  with  a  common  curriculum, 

children will be able to move from school to school across the nation and basically not have the continuity of their studies interrupted.

Mathis 2010

The  project  was  fast tracked:  Achieve  was  to  have  a  draft  by  summer 2009 and grade by grade standards by the end  of  the  year. Historically, the development  of  subject matter  standards  had  been  the  province  of  specialists  in those subjects working in universities and in schools. By contrast, Achieve work groups met in private 

and the development work was  conducted by persons who 

were  not,  with  apparently  only  a  single  exception,  K-12  educators.  The  work groups were staffed almost exclusively by employees of Achieve, testing companies (ACT and the College Board), and pro-account ability groups (e.g., America‘s Choice,  Student  Achievement  Partners,  the  Hoover  Institute). 

Practitioners  and subject matter experts complained that they were excluded from the development process. 

Mathis 2010

Some scholars argue that common core state standards will inevitably lead to restrictive high-stakes, standardized testing similar to that associated with NCLB (Au, 2013). They hold the view that the authentic standards movement has been subverted by a high-stakes standardized test-based movement. Scholars in the field such as Wayne Au (2013) contend that these forms of standards and accountability have deviated from their original intent and have relied erroneously on the faulty measures provided by high-stakes, standardized tests. Moreover, Au (2013) and other scholars in the field note that socioeconomically disadvantaged children across race lines are seeing certain subjects such as art or physical education eliminated to focus on mathematics and literacy as well as test preparation.

A thorough assessment of common core state standards as an education policy reveals that despite being referred to as state standards, the common core state standards are really national standards (Mathis, 2010; Au, 2013). A careful evaluation of the policy reveals that these standards were originally developed with national standards as the primary goal (Au, 2013). In fact, the goal and referring to them as state standards was mainly a tactic or strategy to aid in negotiating the complicated politics of national standards and national curriculum (Au, 2013).

In fact, the support for common core state standards is comparable to that of NCLB with the exception of two critical aspects. With the common core state standards unlike NCLB, the support of civil rights organizations and discourse around racial achievement gaps and inequality are notably absent (Au, 2013). There are also similarities in terms of the opposition generated against both policies (Au, 2013). For example, opponents of both education policies cited the need for local control, concerns or fears of a federal overreach with a possible national curriculum, fiscal efficiency, and parents’ rights (Au, 2013). As was the case with NCLB, a close examination of the political landscape concerning the policy reveals that the common core has caused a division or split amongst some political conservatives (Au, 2013). For instance, right wing extremists, populist libertarians, states’ rights advocates, and Tea Party styled free market nationalists such as the Pioneer Institute, the American Principles Project, the Washington Policy Center, and the Goldwater Institute have taken a stand against the common core state standards movement due to years of federal control and critique of big government spending (Au, 2013). In 2013, some 10 states backtracked on their support of the common core state standards with conservative Republicans in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Alabama leading the effort to block the implementation of the policy in their respective states (Au, 2013). While liberal Democrats tend to be supporters of the common core state standards as was the case with NCLB initially, the policy initiative has also caused some rifts amongst left progressives (Au, 2013). 

Deas 2018

NAEP 4th grade math scores similarly showed no improve- ment from 2009 to 2017 and, during the most intensive period of implementation of Common Core from 2013 to 2017, we saw the first statistically significant decline, from 242 to 240, since the NAEP assessment baseline in 1990.40 These results were uneven for different student subpopulations, with students at top end of the scale (75th and 90th percentiles) continuing the long-term trend of small significant gains from 2009 to 2017; however, low to average performing students at 10th, 25th and 50th percentiles saw their first significant declines since the 1990 baseline between 2013 and 2017, from 203 to 198, from 222 to 219, and from 243 to 241, respectively.

There was no statistically significant change between 2013 and 2017 in the performance of Black and Hispanic students, but a small significant decline for White students from 250 to 248.41 NAEP 12th grade math scores are available only through 2015. Scores were unchanged between 2009 and 2013 at 153, but were statistically significantly lower at 152 in 2015. The change from 2013 to 2105 was uneven among student groups. There was no significant change for higher achieving students at the 90th and 75th percentiles, while lower achieving students at the 50th, 25th, and 10th percentiles saw statistically significant declines of 2, 3, and 4 percentile points respectively. White, Black, and Hispanic students were all reported to have dropped by 2 points between 2013 and 2015.

In U.S. reading at grade 8 on NAEP, there was a small statistically significant improvement from 264 in 2009 to 267 in 2017, but no significant improvement since full implementation of Common Core in 2013. The impact was uneven for different student subgroups. There was no significant change between 2013 and 2017 for high and average performing student groups (90th, 75th, and 50th percentiles) but there were statistically significant declines for students in lower performing groups at the 25th and 10th percentiles, including a decline of 1 point for students at the 25th percentile and a decline of 4 points for students at the 10th percentile. While there was a small statistically significant improvement between 2009 and 2017 for White, Black, and Hispanic students, there were no significant improvements between 2013 and 2017 for any of these student groups.

NAEP reading at grade 4 reported no statistically signifi- cant change from 2009 to 2017 and also no significant change from 2013 to 2017. Over the period of full Common Core implementation from 2013 to 2017, there were no significant changes for students at the 90th and 50th percentiles and improvement in line with long-term trends for students at the 75th percentile (increase of 2 points), but there were statistically significant declines for lower performing students at the 25th and 10th percentiles of 1 and 3 points respectively. There were no statistically significant changes between 2013 and 2017 for White, Black, or Hispanic students.

NAEP reading results at grade 12 are available only through 2015. Unfortunately, there has been no statistically significant improvement since 2002, including no significant change between 2013 and 2015.47 Similarly, there were no significant improvements for White, Black, or Hispanic students between 2013 and 2015. Attempting to zero in more precisely on the state-level impact of Common Core, one analysis of state declines on NAEP in 2015 found that states that moved to full implementation of Common Core experienced larger declines than states that had not yet done so, indicating the decline may be related to Common Core.

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