Tougher standards have become reformers’ latest strategy to close the U.S. achievement gap. Why can’t Ginger read? We did not give her big chapter books soon enough!

I am sure one appeal of the standards movement is that it offers a simple fix for a simple problem. The fact that our simple problem may be a grossly oversimplified problem in disguise is ignored. Given the enormous costs and efforts involved in shifting classroom content, though, standards proponents should have explored one more question in depth before they leapt into the Common Core: What if we are wrong and the achievement gap only peripherally relates to classroom content?

Because if content is not central to the achievement gap then, damn! We have wasted so much money and so much time. So many bodies are looking under the streetlight on the wrong block. I am afraid that may be exactly what the standards reform movement has done.

Why do I believe more rigorous standards will not rescue us? Schools operated under their own state standards before the Common Core forced Illinois and other states to rework their many, previously-defined expectations. While going into detail about previous standards would require reams of pages filled with tiny details, I can skip those details and assert at least one fact: The old Illinois standards graduated both students ready to enter the best universities in the world, and students who couldn’t fill out an employment application or calculate a 20% tip.

Eduhonesty: I expect the same learning disparity to unfold under the Common Core, even in those states that have backed away from the Core. The standards movement and those Core–adapted standards remain. The huge gap in background knowledge and academic aptitude between students remains. Our test scores keep documenting this fact and we are nearly a decade into the Common Core experiment.