By Richard Larsen.

Common Core State Standards for education were advanced as a holistic reform intended to raise academic performance based on standardized achievement results. When reading the standards themselves, and the stated objectives, it’s inconceivable that anyone would take exception to them. Indeed, the education reform language sounds as idealistic and pertinent as any could. They were superbly crafted. Regrettably, in application, much is lost in translation, and Common Core is quickly becoming a significant detriment to our public educational system.

 Achieve Inc. (a Bill Gates-funded educational  consulting firm) created the standards, for the  National Governor’s Association (NGA). And in 2010  when they were rolled out, adoption of the standards  by the respective states was tied to the Race To the  Top grants, funded by the massive Stimulus package of  2009. The granting of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)  waivers augmented inducement for states adopting the  standards. The irony of the latter is that we’ve learned  over the past ten years of NCLB that accountability  and subsequent punishment of districts, schools, and  teachers does not substantively improve the quality of  education. Yet it’s a significant characteristic of CC.

Achieve, Inc. called upon 135 academicians and  assessment experts, most with ties to testing companies, to draft CC. The standards had, prior to their rollout, never been fully implemented or tested in actual schools. This represented a sharp break from educational reform traditions of basing reforms on empirical data and calculable results. Very few of the 135-member team were either classroom teachers or current administrators. The other most conspicuous absence from the development team was parents. After the standards were drafted, K-12 educators were reportedly brought in to “tweak and endorse the standards” to “lend legitimacy to the results, according to the editors of RethinkingSchools.org.

 By contrast, when I served on the Excellence In Public Education  Commission for Idaho in the 80s, almost all of the commission  members were educators, administrators, and/or parents. All of the  major stakeholders in public education were represented. Such  stakeholder involvement was conspicuously, and suspiciously, absent  when CC was drawn up.

Perhaps none have explained the problems with CC as eloquently and  precisely as Carol Burris from New York. In 2010 she was named the  New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators  Association, and in 2013 she was named the New York State High  School Principal of the Year. She has identified five key reasons CC is disastrous for education. She was extremely supportive of the objectives of CC, yet after thoroughly examining the program, realized the damage it would do to education. The following are some of her findings:

“Despite the claims of supporters, the standards are not built on sound research. They have never been field-tested nor proven to raise student achievement. The truth of the matter is research shows the rigor of state standards is not related to student achievement. In addition, a study of the state standards most like the Common Core by the Brookings Institution concluded that it is likely that the Common Core will have minimal effect on student learning. There is no research that supports the untested standards and practices of the Common Core.

 “The Common Core standards contradict what we know about the  way young children learn. Louisa Moats, one of the few early  childhood experts on the team that wrote the early literacy standards,  is now an outspoken critic. Why? Because the K to 3 Common Core  standards disregard decades of research on early reading development.  Shortly after the standards were published, 500 early-childhood  experts — pediatricians, researchers and psychologists — found the  early-childhood Common Core standards to be so developmentally  inappropriate that they called for their suspension in grades K to 3.

“The Common Core standards for English Language Arts promote the use of questionable strategies and over-emphasize informational text. One of New Jersey’s leading literacy experts is Russ Walsh of Rider University. Walsh, as well as other literacy experts, has become uncomfortable with the beliefs that guide the Common Core ELA standards, specifically that background knowledge does not matter for reading, “close reading” should dominate literacy instruction, and that students should be reading only grade-level texts. There is also worry that informational texts are crowding out literature in English Language Arts classes.

“The Common Core tests are unreasonably difficult and will result in unfair  consequences for students. Even as New Jersey begins the PARCC exams,  some states have begun giving their own Common Core tests. New York’s  students have taken Common Core tests twice. Proficiency rates dramatically  dropped to the low 30s, with minimal improvement in year two. Results have  been especially devastating for special-education students, English language  learners, and students of color and poverty — with proficiency rates in single  digits for students with disabilities who are poor.

“Low test scores have consequences for kids. Students are put into remedial    classes. Test scores are used to decide who gets into gifted programs and into competitive schools. In a pro-Common Core report titled “Opportunity by Design,” The Carnegie Corporation estimated that due to the Common Core, the national six-year dropout rate will double from 15 percent to 30 percent, and the four-year graduation rate will drop from 75 percent to 53 percent.

“New York students took the Common Core algebra test, which is a graduation requirement, last June. Only 22 percent met the Common Core score that is being phased in as the new passing standard for graduation. Are these fair and reasonable standards? I think not.”

 This kind of top-down regulation of education is entirely the opposite of  what is needed in education, and none can offer a better assessment of  what works and what doesn’t than those with “boots on the ground;”  the teachers, with parental input. The establishment of standards by  bureaucrats and corporate sponsors, as CC was devised, is the wrong  approach entirely.

Senator Mike Crapo’s (R-ID) Local Leadership in Education Act, Senate Bill 144, needs to be passed. This Act will “prohibit the Federal Government from mandating, incentivizing, or making financial support conditional upon a State, local educational agency, or school’s adoption of specific instructional content, academic standards, or curriculum, or on the administration of assessments or tests, and for other purposes.”

All efforts to roll back and rescind CC are advisable at this juncture, at the state and local level, as well. This is not a partisan issue. Something as crucial as our children’s education transcends politics, and bears substantive implications for the future of America, as a nation and as a people.