The choice whether or not to adopt the Federal government's "Common Core" education standards has become a choice between money and student performance for the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Massachusetts has applied for a $250 million "Race to the Top" grant from the Department of Education. In order for Massachusetts to receive the entire amount, they have to adopt the Federal government's Common Core standards which are significantly lower than those the state already has in place. If they adopt the Common Core, Massachusetts will be telling it's students and their parents that Federal money is more important than the education students receive.
According to the Boston Herald, there are signs that Massachusetts will adopt the Common Core standards dooming Massachusetts students to a system that doesn't teach students to sound out words until fourth or fifth grade.
National education standards won't fix education in America, say Lindsey Burke and Jennifer Marshall in a Heritage Foundation report published earlier this year. In it, they cite three misconceptions about national standards which were summarized in a June 21st blog post.
Misconception #1: National standards are necessary so parents can understand how their children compare with other children across the country. The information parents need is already available. State tests let parents know how well their children have mastered the curriculum. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, currently administered to samples of students in each state, provides an external audit of state tests. If transparency about that data has been insufficient, it does not merit a national standards and testing regime. It calls for better transparency and accountability to parents.
Misconception #2: National standards would make American students more competitive with their international peers. While it’s true that many of the countries that outperform the United States on international tests have national standards, so do most of the countries that score lower than the United States. Even when it comes to state standards, the relationship between academic performance and the quality of those standards is inconsistent.
Misconception #3: National standards are necessary because state standards vary in quality. While it’s true that some state standards are better than others, the same pressures that drive down state standards would likely plague national standards. For that reason, national standards will tend to decline toward the average among states, undercutting states with higher standards, such as Massachusetts. Ultimately, the goal of uniformity would result in the standardization of mediocrity.
That same blog post brings up another point. National standards make it harder for parents to be involved with the education of their children. With local control of schools, parents in a community can petition their school board to change the way local schools operate in order to improve overall student performance. They can even directly help bring about the changes needed.
National standards make parental involvement problematic. There's no local school board to petition or even join. Instead, they have to try to get a board of appointed bureaucrats to listen to them and hope their voices aren't drowned out by tens of thousands of other parents doing the same thing.
The response from the people of Massachusetts should be very simple and very direct. "We've upped our standards. Up yours."
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