Report Says Common Core Alone Not Likely To Improve Quality Of Education

The Grand Rapids Press (7/22, Murray) reports that a new report from the Michigan Education Association's research arm, the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice , "pokes holes in the theory that national standards will...boost academic achievement." William Mathis, "managing director of the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder," wrote in the report that if "both the in-school and out-of-school influences on test scores" are addressed, "common core standards are not likely to improve the quality and equity of America's public schools." While he "recommends that work in the standards continues," he suggests that they be used "only as a low-stakes advisory and assistance tool for states and local districts for the purposes of curriculum improvement, articulation and professional development."

 

Valerie Strauss wrote in a blog for the Washington Post (7/21) regarding whether "the proposed national math and English-language standards are 'clearly superior' to those standards in most of the states." The report authored by William J. Mathis, "released on the same day as the Fordham assessment of state standards, gives this answer: Not really." Strauss pointed out, however, that the "Obama administration clearly wants states to adopt common standards" and any "state wanting Race money would be silly not to join" the common standards initiative, "and so most of them are -- whether they have any impact or not."