Since the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in 2010, there has been a crusade of sorts toward its repeal. But now, support for the Common Core is increasingly becoming a campaign issue.
Although Common Core is a voluntary initiative undertaken by states and there is no law, statute or mandate on the federal level compelling its use, an overwhelming number of critics have compared the initiative to No Child Left Behind or argued that the states are being bribed into accepting the policy via grants and other federal funding.
Last week, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation requiring that the state school board replace the Common Core mathematics and language arts standards by August 2016. This marked a sharp departure for Fallin, who had previously embraced the initiative.
She followed Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who signed legislation on May 30 that requires that new educational standards and assessments be ready by 2015.
Oklahoma and South Carolina join Indiana in abandoning the initiative. Indiana — which was not an original adopter of the initiative — adopted new standards earlier this year, which some have argued strongly resemble the Common Core. Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri has also been sent legislation requiring the installation of new standards.
The Common Core State Standards were initially embraced by 44 states and the District of Columbia, with Alaska, Nebraska, Indiana, Texas and Virginia choosing not to adopt the standards at the state level. Minnesota opted only to adopt the language arts standards.
Increasingly, Common Core has became a kind of litmus test in political circles. With many from the tea party calling the initiative “ObamaCore” and arguing that the initiative gives the federal government too much control over the educational system, and with a growing chorus of educators upset with the local schools’ unpreparedness for meeting the new standards’ assessments and concerned about implementation of the initiative for the lesser grades, support for Common Core is proving costly during this midterm cycle.
Both ends of the political spectrum have held up Common Core as a symbol for all that is wrong with the American educational system. For the right, Common Core represents an intrusion into the educational system by the federal government. It has become a proxy to vent about frustrations about the Obama White House and other perceived intrusive policies, such as the Affordable Care Act. For the left, the Common Core, which relies on a number of privately-produced assessments and study materials, represents the continued privatization of education in the United States.
Despite this, there is a real need for standardizing and raising educational standards in the country. It is estimated that approximately 50 percent of all two-year college students and 20 percent of all four-year university students are unprepared for collegiate-level work and require some level of remediation.
“If we let these standards go it will be decades before we will be able to rally 45 or 50 states in the kind of work that was done to get these standards,” said Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York.
However, questions about the origins of the initiative have made rallying around it difficult. Concerns over the role the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation played in lobbying for the passage of the initiative and the speed of the initiative’s passage — it is seen as one of the fastest swings in educational policy in the nation’s history — beg the question of whether the Common Core is truly an altruistic effort toward establishing a single educational standard for all students in the United States. For many, it has all of the markings of a capitalistic setup, in which billions of educational dollars will be funneled to study materials, assessments, hardware and software, which would benefit companies such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Microsoft.
“Who decided to monetize the public schools? Who determined that the federal government should promote privatization and neglect public education? Who decided that the federal government should watch in silence as school segregation resumed and grew? Who decided that schools should invest in Common Core instead of smaller classes and school nurses?,” wrote Valerie Strauss for The Washington Post. “These are questions that should be asked at congressional hearings.”