Heritage Foundation
Common Core National Standards and Tests: Empty Promises and Increased Federal Overreach Into Education
Lindsey Burke, Brittany Corona, Jennifer A. Marshall, Rachel Sheffield and Sandra Stotsky

An indepth look…

Americans who cherish limited government must be constantly vigilant of pushes to centralize various aspects of our lives. Government intervention is a zero-sum game; every act of centralization comes at the expense of liberty and the civil society institutions upon which this country was founded.

Education is no exception. Growing federal intervention in education over the past half century has come at the expense of state and local school autonomy, and has done little to improve academic outcomes. Every new fad and program has brought not academic excellence but bureaucratic red tape for teachers and school leaders, while wresting away decision-making authority from parents.

Despite significant growth in federal intervention, American students are hardly better off now than they were in the 1970s. Graduation rates for disadvantaged students, reading performance, and international competitiveness have remained relatively flat, despite a near tripling of real per-pupil federal expenditures and more than 100 federal education programs. Achievement gaps between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers, and between white and minority children, remain stubbornly persistent. While many of these problems stem from a lack of educational choice and a monopolistic public education system, the growth in federal intervention, programs, and spending has only exacerbated them.

Federal intervention in education has been enormous under the Obama Administration, and has been coupled with a gross disregard for the normal legislative process. And today, Americans face the next massive effort to further centralize education: the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

The battle over national standards and tests is ultimately a battle over who controls the content taught in every local public school in America. Something as important as the education of America’s children should not be subjected to centralization or the whims of Washington bureaucrats. What is taught in America’s classrooms should be informed by parents, by principals, by teachers, and by the business community, which can provide input about the skills students need to be competitive when they leave high school.

Choice in education through vouchers, education savings accounts, online learning, tuition tax credit options, homeschooling—all of these options are changing how education is delivered to students, matching options to student learning needs. It’s the type of customization that has been absent from our education system. Choice and customization are critical components necessary to improve education in America. Imposing uniformity on the system through national standards and tests and further centralizing decision-making will only perpetuate the status quo.

The good news is, citizens and leaders in a number of states are fighting to regain control over standards and curriculum, defending against a nationalization of education. Ultimately, we should work to ensure that decisions are made by those closest to the student: teachers, principals, and parents.

Join the Fight Against Common Core

Lindsey M. Burke

Two competing forces are pushing on America’s K–12 education system today. One is an effort to infuse education choice into a long-stagnant system, empowering parents with the ability to send their children to a school that meets their unique learning needs.

The other is an effort to further centralize education through Common Core national standards and tests.

Across the country, education choice options have been proliferating rapidly, including vouchers, tuition tax credits, special needs scholarships, and education savings accounts. Educational choice is a revolution because it funds children instead of physical school buildings and allows dollars to follow children to any school—or education option—that meets their unique learning needs.

Choice Empowers Parents to direct their child’s share of education funding, giving them options beyond an assigned government school.

Choice Pressures Public Schools with a much-needed competitive atmosphere, which works toward improving educational outcomes for students who take advantage of choice options as well as students who choose to attend their local public schools.

Choice Helps Kids. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., now have private school choice programs—and more states are considering implementing choice options. Education choice represents the type of innovation and freedom that will provide long-overdue reform to the K–12 education system, and holds the potential to truly raise educational outcomes for every child across the country.

But at the same time this encouraging shift toward education choice is underway, there is a push to take education in the exact opposite direction through Common Core national standards and tests.

Common Core Is An Effort to Centralize Education by dictating the standards and assessments that will determine the content taught in every public school across the country.

Common Core Has No Evidence that it will improve academic outcomes or boost international competitiveness. But the Obama Administration has pushed states to adopt national standards and assessments in exchange for offers of billions of dollars in federal funding and waivers from the onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind.

Common Core Assumes that top-down, uniform standards and assessments—driven by federal bureaucrats and national organizations—are preferable to the state and local reform efforts guided by input from parents, teachers, and taxpayers.

States have been competing to improve their education systems by implementing education choice options and other reforms such as alternative teacher certification, transparent A–F grading systems, and a focus on reading achievement.

American education is at a crossroads: One path leads toward further centralization and greater federal intervention. The other path leads toward robust education choice, including school choice and choice in curricula.

Common Core takes the path toward centralization, and state leaders should seize the moment to resist this latest federal overreach. National standards and tests are a challenge to educational freedom in America, and state and local leaders who believe in limited government should resist them.

—Originally published on The Foundry, May 29, 2013.

Gov. Pence Pauses Indiana Common Core Standards

Lindsey M. Burke

Indiana has just given every state that agreed to adopt Common Core national education standards and tests a lesson in prudent governance. On Saturday [May 11, 2013], Governor Mike Pence (R) signed the Common Core “Pause” bill into law, halting implementation of Common Core until state agencies, teachers, and taxpayers better understand the implications of Common Core adoption.

Indiana law now requires that the Common Core standards be evaluated and compared to existing state standards, and that a cost assessment be conducted by the state’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before implementation moves forward. It’s something every state that adopted Common Core should have done before agreeing to do so. Specifically, the law states that after May 15, 2013, the state board may take no further actions to implement as standards for the state or direct the department to implement any common core standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative until the state board conducts a comprehensive evaluation of the common core standards.

While the common standards Indiana adopted remain in effect, the state has taken the necessary steps to evaluate the merits of Common Core standards and assessments, and their costs.

What exactly does the Common Core Pause law require? The Indiana Department of Education must provide a written evaluation of the Common Core standards before July 1, 2013, which must be submitted to the governor, legislative council, state board of education, and the legislative study committee established by the Pause law. The legislative study committee will evaluate Common Core, and produce a report by November 1, 2013, to:

Compare Indiana’s existing state standards to Common Core standards;

“[C]onsider best practices in developing and adopting the standards, seeking information from a broad range of sources,” which should include teachers, content matter experts and “any other standards the study committee considers to be superior standards”; and

Evaluate the cost to the state and school districts of moving toward Common Core assessments.

In addition to the state Department of Education evaluation and the legislative study committee report, the Common Core Pause law requires that by September 1, 2013, the Office of Management and Budget provide a fiscal impact statement on the cost of Common Core to taxpayers. Specifically, the Pause law states that the Indiana OMB, “in consultation with the state board, shall provide an opinion concerning the fiscal impact to the state and school corporations if the state board: (1) fully implements the common core standards; and (2) discontinues the implementation of the common core standards.”

Finally, the law requires the state board of education to hold at least three public meetings and take public testimony on Common Core standards and tests.

While the law does not prohibit the use of Common Core standards implemented by the state board, the board may not require the use of Common Core assessments until the board receives the evaluations conducted by the state Department of Education, the legislative study committee, and the state OMB. Pence stated:

I have long believed that education is a state and local function and we must always work to ensure that our students are being taught to the highest academic standards and that our curriculum is developed by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.… The legislation I sign today hits the pause button on Common Core so Hoosiers can thoroughly evaluate which standards will best serve the interests of our kids.

Pence is exactly right. States and local school districts should determine the standards and assessments that are used in their classrooms, not national organizations or Washington bureaucrats. Indiana has provided a good model for other states that want to determine whether or not Common Core is a wise undertaking.

Hitting the “Pause” button is a good first step, but no matter the outcome of the evaluations by various agencies in Indiana, the idea of ceding control over the content taught in any state should give governors and policymakers pause. It is, as state constitutions and statutes demonstrate, the responsibility of states and local scool districts to define and implement standards, assessments, and curricula.

Common Core national standards represent an unprecedented surrender of state educational control to Washington. Conservative leaders can reclaim control over the content taught in their local schools by resisting the imposition of national standards and tests and preventing their implementation...

Read the rest of the article at the Heritage Foundation