Education Week - March 1, 2017 - 20

COMMENTARY

In Standards Battle, States Should Stay the Course
By Maria Ferguson

T

"

The power of the federal bully pulpit is
strong and can be used for good or ill. "

Getty

he Common Core State Standards and the
broader movement of states to use more-rigorous standards for college and career readiness may seem like yesterday's news now that
Betsy DeVos is ensconced as the U.S. secretary
of education. But it is important for policymakers, education leaders, and the media not
to lose sight of the enormous amount of time
and resources that have been devoted to implementing the
standards across the country.
President Donald Trump, demonstrating his penchant for
policy changes not tethered to reality, has been promising to
"put an end to the common core" since his campaign days. Of
course, he has no authority to do that, and even if he did, recent research from the Center on Education Policy at George
Washington University (the organization I lead) shows that
scrapping the standards may not be what most teachers and
district leaders want.
But ﬁrst, let's once more state the facts about the common
core to counter persistent misinformation about who developed
the standards and why they are being used:
s4HEFEDERALGOVERNMENTHASNODOMINIONOVERVOLUNTARY
state standards, including the common core.
s4HEFEDERALGOVERNMENTNEVERREQUIREDSTATESTOIMPLEment the common core. Those that did, did so freely and on
their own accord.
s/FTHESTATESTHATORIGINALLYADOPTEDTHECOMMONCORE
eight have ofﬁcially repealed or withdrawn the standards,
while 21 states have revised or are revising the standards,
according to a recent study by the research organization Abt
Associates. According to the analysis, nine of the 21 revising
states found that the changes have kept the original standards
mostly intact and are mainly clariﬁcations or customizations.
Bottom line: Whether states are calling their new standards
the common core or not, nearly every state has, in recent years,
moved to more-rigorous college- and career-ready standards.
&ROMLATE
THE#ENTERON%DUCATION0OLICYSURVEYED

hundreds of teachers and district leaders and interviewed dozens more teachers for in-depth case studies about their efforts
to implement the common core or other standards for college
and career readiness. Despite facing challenges along the way,
most participants indicated that the move to more-rigorous
standards has been a positive one. Teachers indicated that the
standards have changed instruction in positive ways, including greater uniformity across states and increased academic
rigor. They indicated that the standards have a greater focus
on the most important skills and knowledge students will need
to succeed after they graduate. Most of the district leaders we
surveyed said that their respective states' current standards
are an improvement over those states' previous standards.
My concern is that if teachers and district leaders are using

the standards and seem satisﬁed with the results, President
Trump's renewed anti-common-core rhetoric will cause disruption and anxiety for local educators-and students-in what
was already a hard sell.
I am not advocating for the common core at any cost. But
if we allow politics to hijack every important education issue
that comes along, we not only will never make any progress,
but also are likely to drive our teachers and education leaders
crazy in the process. While I understand that it may be easier
(and in some cases wiser) to lie low and seek consensus when
a power shift occurs, that does not help educators who are engaged in challenging instructional work. For the last decade,
the effort to move a majority of states toward more-rigorous
college- and career-ready standards, such as the common core,

By Jia Lok Pratt

I

left corporate America more than
10 years ago to join the education
reform movement. I took an administrative leadership position
within a high-performing charter
network because, as a first-generation college graduate, I knew
ﬁrsthand the power of education to
shape one's life trajectory. I wanted to be
part of the solution to improve public education for all children, and charter schools
seemed a promising catalyst to transform
public schools.
A decade later, my passion for the movement has changed. Somewhere along
the way, the narrative of charter schools
seemed to shift from "inspire and innovate"
to "why can't all schools succeed?" The goal
switched from establishing a proof point to
gaining market share.
I had not joined the education reform
movement to ﬁght for charter expansion.
And I deﬁnitely didn't join because I believed teachers in traditional public schools
were less talented, motivated, or passionate educators than teachers in charter
schools, or that they cared more about
their jobs and pensions than the children
they teach.
The discourse on public education has
boiled down to a war between reformers
and teachers' unions, and the arguments

on both sides serve as examples of reductive reasoning at its worst.
The options presented to reformers: Save
public schools, or proliferate charters? Give
PARENTSTHERIGHTTOCHOOSEHIGH
QUALITY
schools, or let kids languish on waiting
lists? Believe poverty does not determine a
child's academic achievement, or that poverty must be ﬁxed before low-income kids
can learn? Those leaders holding the mic
on both sides of the argument have limited
the conversation to a false dichotomy that
pits educators against one another.
As a past education reformer who still
supports charters and as a progressive
thinker who can't stomach the rhetoric of
either side, I wonder when we will wake up
and realize that we are having the wrong
conversation.
Even the staunchest charter proponents
don't suggest that charters can grow to
serve all children who attend underperforming schools in urban districts. If the
true goal of education reform is to bring
HIGH
QUALITYEDUCATIONTOall children, reformers should bow out of the ideological
wars and elevate the discourse on urban
public education. They must craft a more
inclusive narrative that restores charters'
original purpose as inspirational models
and uplifts teachers in traditional public
schools as partners in a common struggle
to improve education.
Why? Because the state of public edu-

20 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 1, 2017 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

cation in America is a reflection of the
STATEOFOURLARGERSOCIETY4HEINEQUALITIES
found in public education are no more unjust than those found in our employment,
health, housing, and criminal-justice systems. A true education reform movement
should extend beyond school walls and address not only the achievement gap measured by standardized tests, but also the
social, economic, and racial injustices that
affect children's lives.
I long to be part of a reform movement
that pushes for change while exercising
humility and acknowledging the role history, policy, racism, bureaucracy, and funding play in keeping public education sepaRATEANDUNEQUALFOR!FRICAN
!MERICAN
children. Instead, we should be willing to
press pause on growth plans to address
the real impact of reformers' actions on
the communities they serve and districts
in which they operate.
The success of charter schools was made
possible through vast philanthropic support that spans the political spectrum. In
my home state of Illinois, Republican Gov.
Bruce Rauner is an avid charter supporter
who has contributed millions to charters
and boasts a namesake school on Chicago's
West Side. Since taking ofﬁce in 2015, he
has single-handedly held the state budget
hostage until the demands of his pro-business "turnaround" agenda are met. As a
result, funding of basic social services has

Getty

'Why Can't All Schools Succeed?'

been decimated, child-care vouchers for
low-income parents have been eliminated,
and promised grants to low-income college
students have been placed on hold.
These safety-net programs provide critical supports to low-income families served
by charter schools and have a direct impact on the educational outcomes of Illinois' children. The irony of the governor's
actions is not rare among charter funders,
with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos deﬁning the extreme.
Education reformers can no longer turn
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Education Week - March 1, 2017

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