Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Conservative editor faults Common Core concept, arguments on both sides of it

Much of the debate about the new Common Core Standards for the nation's schools is misinformed, obscuring more fundamental issues, National Review Senior Editor Ramesh Ponnuru writes in an opinion piece for Bloomberg News.

"Proponents of the Common Core tend to view its critics as an ignorant mob. Support for it is, in certain circles, a sign of one’s seriousness about education reform," Ponnuru writes. "Yet the reform strategy it represents hasn’t been thought through well, and it seems unlikely to work."

Ponnuru argues that the case for common set of standards is weak. "High standards may be valuable, but why do they have to be common? It isn’t as though different state standards are a major problem in U.S. education. There’s more variation in achievement within states than between them. Common standards may make life a bit easier for students who move across state lines, but they also mean that we lose a chance for states to experiment." (Read more)

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