A bittersweet legacy for the common core

Editorial by Charlotte Observer, November 27, 2015.

Two decades from now, or whenever people start to wonder again why we don’t know if a North Carolina education is as good as a Maryland education, we will remember what once was the Common Core. Whether it’s a fond memory remains to be seen.

The Common Core isn’t dead yet, but it will be. The multi-state education collaborative suffered its most profound blow last week, when the Massachusetts Board of Education decided to leave the Common Core and develop its own state tests. Massachusetts had been intimately involved in the development of the Common Core a half-dozen years ago, to the point where its commissioner of education, Mitchell Chester, had become the chairman of the board overseeing the tests.

Now, Massachusetts joins more than 15 states that have left the effort or, like North Carolina, are taking steps to do so. Each departure dilutes the case that Common Core makes – that it helps states measure how well they’re educating children by comparing test results with other states.

Instead, the initiative has fallen victim to a lethal blend of politics and selfishness. The trouble began, of course, when Republicans fooled people into thinking the Common Core was Obamacare for education, when in fact the concept was conceived and developed by state educators. To this day, the only thing the feds have to do with Common Core is offering states incentives to join.

But even that hasn’t gone over well with education administrators, who’ve felt strong-armed by the federal nudging. Teachers have had their own issues with the tests, including the legitimate gripe that they had too little training and time to implement Common Core curriculum. They complained loudest, however, about the intrusion the tests had on their classroom time.

The Common Core also got caught up in the fight over standardized testing. Anti-test educators ignored that the Common Core actually helped students by identifying struggling teachers. Anti-test parents ignored that the rigorous standards revealed deficiencies in classrooms and schools that everyone thought were fine. And no one – administrators, teachers or parents – liked the poor test results that state after state announced.

Common Core officials aren’t without blame. They recognized the backlash too late, and they did too little to encourage educators and states to come together to improve the tests. Instead, states are going their own way, once again.

But as we travel back to the way things were, an interesting pattern has emerged. Instead of ditching the Common Core tests, states are rebranding them. In at least some cases, much of the rigor remains. We hope, at the least, that North Carolina chooses a similar path.

It’s a bittersweet legacy for the test’s supporters. In the end, states are acknowledging that they need better standards, which were the “core” of the Common Core. But as with so many other things, the “common” was the biggest obstacle of all.