When the National Governor's Association, led by then-Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, and the Council of Chief State School Officers developed a framework of academic standards to raise student performance in math and language arts, they stressed that the effort was state-driven and not in any way a national curriculum, hence the Common Core State Standards.
They did so to prevent the standards from being politicized.
It didn’t work.
In the last few months, there's been mounting Republican opposition in Georgia and elsewhere to the Common Core State Standards, much of it driven by misinformation and demagoguery.
That was best seen two weeks ago at a Cobb County Board of Education meeting where both the public and board members displayed a disappointing lack of knowledge about what’s actually in the Common Core, a surprise in a county noted for its academic excellence and forward-thinking schools.
A simple vote on new math texts aligned with Common Core devolved into a two-hour debate on the evils of the standards, led by Cobb board member Kathleen Angelucci, who said, "It's like ObamaCare. You vote for it and then find out what's in it."
Among Angelucci's arguments against the standards was that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank that has extensively reviewed Common Core, decreed Georgia did not need Common Core. That was news to me, so I called Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Fordham Institute.
“We strongly support the Common Core,” he told me. “We advise any states that have adopted the Common Core including Georgia to stay the course. This is an historic opportunity to raise standards.”
“We are not going to change people’s minds if they think this a communist plot or an Obama administration plot,” Petrilli said. “There is a certain part of the population who is going to be ready to believe that. We need the voices of mainstream Republicans and mainstream conservatives who work in business and who understand that because of the way the economy is changing, these higher-level skills are more important than ever.”
Already adopted by Georgia and 44 other states, Common Core will make students more college- and career-ready, allow apple-to-apple state comparisons, and ease the transition for students moving from one state to another. Until now, the United States has had 50 sets of standards and 50 sets of tests.
The transition to Common Core is not proving to be a major leap for Georgia schools, because the new Georgia Performance Standards closely align with most of the Common Core standards. That’s why the opposition is so perplexing. Georgia is essentially already teaching the Common Core.
By voting against math materials aligned with the Common Core, the Cobb school board put its teachers in a terrible position. A committee of teachers adopted the math materials, which were on display throughout the district, so it’s unclear why board members professed so little understanding of what was in them. I have received several notes from teachers flabbergasted by the board’s denouncement of Common Core and its vote against buying the materials.
One teacher told me, “I’m using the samples of the adoption materials for a large part of my instruction at this time. The old materials simply don’t match in content or rigor. As usual, the people the decision will impact the most have had virtually no voice in what will happen. I’m not political; I don’t think in terms of Republican or Democrat or tea party, whatever. But it seems to me that the school board is very much doing that. They’ve made math materials into some sort of political platform instead of what it should be — getting our kids and teachers what they need.”
Even worse, Cobb and the politicians misrepresenting Common Core and urging its repeal are ensuring that Georgia will continue to appear as an education backwater.
“If Georgia backs out of Common Core, there well may be some employers who have second thoughts about locating in Georgia,” said Petrilli. “The business community will see Georgia as not serious about improving its schools and, therefore, not a good place to do business.”
