Common Core

This report provides the historical background and interpretive analysis needed to understand controversies surrounding Common Core and its associated tests.

In-depth analysis of how the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) provides high-quality education to more than 84,000 eligible Military-Connected Children in more than 190 schools around the world and scores above the national averages on nearly all standardized assessments. This report also examines efforts to expand that success to Military-Connected Children attending non-DoDEA schools.

Stotsky first describes her qualifications, as well as the lack of relevant qualifications in Common Core’s standards writers and in most of the members of Common Core’s Validation Committee, on which she served in 2009-2010.

The Founders of the American experiment in democracy assumed that understanding American history was essential in a Union where publicspirited citizenship and the capacity to live under laws “wholesome and necessary for the public good” would characterize the new nation. To proceed without the knowledge of history, in their view, was a sure path to “a tragedy or a farce.”

However, the greatest harm to higher education may accrue from the alignment of the SAT to Common Core’s high school standards, converting the SAT from an adaptable test predictive of college work to an inflexible retrospective test aligned to and locking in a low level of mathematics. This means that future SAT scores will be less informative to college admission counselors than they now are, and that the SAT will lose its role in locating students with high STEM potential in high schools with weak mathematics and science instruction.

The era of “Big Data” has overtaken the field of education. New technology promises to transform education, facilitating previously unimagined learning opportunities and, from a purely administrative standpoint, allowing educators to complete in seconds what used to consume laborious hours.

The purpose of this report is to provide information to state legislators, boards of education, and departments of education on why they should adopt a stand-alone and comprehensive reading licensure test addressing Common Core’s reading standards. We do not tell states what test to adopt. Rather, we describe the features they should consider before they decide on a test that these prospective teachers should be required to pass if the state does not already require a reading test adequately addressing all of Common Core’s reading standards

The final version of the Common Core standards was released in June 2010. Also released at the same time was a report containing the signatures of 24 members of the Common Core Validation Committee, a committee appointed in the summer of 2009 to review the various drafts of the standards and to assure the public that the standards in mathematics and English language arts were research-based, rigorous, and internationally competitive.

The fate of poetry in the school curriculum may seem like an odd subject for a Pioneer Institute report. But we are struck by the absence of comments on what constitutes literary study in the schools from organizations that might be expected to have a professional interest in the school curriculum (e.g., National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association, Association of Supervisors and Curriculum Developers) and from higher education sources that might be expected to have a discipline-based interest in the topic (e.g., American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Modern Language Association).

Testimony to the Missouri Elementary and Secondary Education Committee provided in February 2014.