About the only charge yet to be leveled against the Common Core is that it promotes tooth decay.
Given the fabricated frenzy around the math and language arts standards adopted by most states including Georgia, that crazy allegation could yet arise.
Anyone who takes the time to read the Common Core State Standards will find straightforward guidelines for what America wants its K-12 students to know and be able to do. And there’s new evidence that if Georgia sticks with the standards, which it adopted in 2010 under the urging of Republican former Gov. Sonny Perdue, its students will know and be able to do a lot more.
Five years after becoming the first state to put Common Core in its classrooms, Kentucky is seeing strong results, releasing new data showing that 62.3 percent of its students are achieving at a level commensurate with college and career success, up from 34 percent in 2010.
“In Kentucky, the numbers speak for themselves, and they suggest the Common Core is a crucial, much-needed policy reform,” said Carmel Martin of the Center for American Progress. “We all want our sons and daughters to succeed — and Kentucky demonstrates that we can’t go back to the status quo when it comes to fairer, stronger and smarter achievement standards.”
Nor should Georgia go back — despite an orchestrated campaign by a small, but driven band of opponents, most of whom wrongly insist that Common Core is an Obama administration initiative.
As State School Superintendent John Barge, a Republican, assured a House hearing earlier this year, Georgia was not coerced into adopting Common Core, saying, “The State Board of Education adopted these standards voluntarily. They were not forced.”
We don’t have to look to Kentucky for proof of success. Georgia districts as diverse as Tift and Gwinnett are seeing gains under Common Core and have urged the Legislature to rebuff critics.
Gwinnett school chief J. Alvin Wilbanks has defended Common Core at several hearings, noting that, while Common Core duplicates much of the Georgia Performance Standards that were in place, “Common Core standards are higher.”
Somehow, the standards – developed by the nation’s governors when they discovered U.S. students falling behind their international peers — have become recast as an insidious federal plot. Surprisingly, few critics have read the standards; even the sponsor of a state Senate effort to repeal the standards admitted twice he had not read them.
Yes, there are a handful of academics who oppose the standards. But those critics, as vocal and prolific as they are in churning out op-eds and flying to out-of-state hearings, represent a distinct minority. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics and the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators all endorse the math standards.
Among the fallacies: Common Core eliminates great works of literature and replaces them with informational texts, including EPA regulations. Yes, Common Core requires students read non-fiction documents under the rationale most will have to digest economic reports and manufacturing manuals in their jobs. But in the 183 pages of suggested readings, Common Core offers a range of informational texts suggestions, including the Declaration of Independence and speeches by Ronald Reagan. (And, yes, one EPA document.) But the standards still call for reading great literature.
Common Core is not a plot, a ruse or a federal overreach. It’s a set of academic standards already showing evidence of success. And Georgia legislators ought to allow that success to continue.
