If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, implementing the Common Core and associated PARCC and SBAC tests in response to NCLB’s failure to close the achievement gap easily qualifies as insane. The Common Core was established to do exactly what NCLB set out to do, if indirectly – use high-pressure testing to drive education.

Before pursuing the Core, though, a few questions should have been answered. Why did NCLB fail? Why did state test scores across the United States often refuse to rise? Why did high-stakes tests have so little impact on the achievement gap and educational results in general?

NCLB aggressively “raised the bar.” That bar went up alright, but it left a deluge of lost students behind. State test scores amply document this fact. Given that NCLB did not hit targets – not a single state came anywhere close to meeting targets — how and why should we expect that raising that proverbial bar once again will somehow produce more successful results?

Did NCLB’s lack of success result from a breakdown in interpreting the true causes of low achievement? I believe so. I would go so far as to say that I do not believe our nation’s leaders even tried to determine the causes of low achievement that plagued some areas much more than others. I believe they thought they could do an end run around those causes, solving the problem by establishing targets and threatening educators who did not meet those targets. Management by fear did not work, but that does not seem to have stopped or slowed the standards movement.

The standards movement is doing exactly the same thing as NCLB by implementing more punitive testing to force educational changes. I don’t expect the Common Core or any set of inflexible national standards to work better than NCLB — and NCLB put the EPIC in epic fail.

Eduhonesty: I view the Core and the standards movement as the latest in a long set of desperate maneuvers designed to shift the national focus away from funding reform, since any reform will affect the “haves” adversely — and the people making these educational policy decisions tend to be “haves” in the purest sense of the word.