Falling from a Greater Height

In many parts of America, in meeting after meeting after meeting, all across the nation, districts are figuring out how to implement new harder, Common Core or Common-Core based standards despite the fact that many students were unable to meet older standards their states were using before the Core. Why? How is this supposed to work?

In response to our students’ too-often-failing leaps as they tried to vault the test bar, governmental and educational leaders are choosing to deliberately elevate the bar, a strategy which makes no sense without additional resources, resources which I do not expect to become available. No one made extra resources available to help schools under NCLB, not in any meaningful fashion. No one helped with RtI. No one supplied substitute teachers while six teachers in my school left the building to brainstorm for Rising Star, an Illinois, NCLB-inspired improvement plan. In these challenging economic times, while a few districts may be lucky enough to be given extra government grants, most of our urban and financially-disadvantaged schools are scrambling to find money to fix broken technology, repair ancient plumbing, buy paper and hire teachers and teaching assistants. We have no extra money. Who will help us? Who will help our students to hit these tougher standards? We were often sweating blood in our attempts to meet previous standards.

Many financially-challenged districts today are using what scarce resources those districts can free up to buy new Common Core-aligned books and software right now. When the U.S. government pushed the adoption of a new, altered curriculum, that curriculum opened up a tremendous money-making opportunity for publishing companies. Schools are replacing as many textbooks as they can afford, buying new materials “aligned” to the Common Core. Districts want the book that has been written to maximize scores on new Core-aligned state tests.

How is this helping students?

Eduhonesty: I am in no way against standards. But the staggering opportunity costs created by new standards deserve to be out front and on the table. As we pay for new books, software, supplies, professional development, and curriculum committee meetings, we ought to be looking at our costs in terms of the gains we can expect to see.

My question: If NCLB did not work — and no documentation suggests it did — then why do we expect new, more demanding standards to work? With Draconian threats for districts that failed to hit targets, NCLB demanded improvements. Those improvements did not materialize. Why will new standards work? How will new standards work?

With more money for more tutoring and longer school years, I could see the standards improving education. But without that $$, all I see are more confusion and higher opportunity costs coming at us.