1. The Common Core is not the same as standardized testing.
For one thing, standardized testing has been a thing in schools since at least the 1980s (give and take a bit depending on what, exactly, we are willing to count as a "standardized test.") Arguably, our national obsession with testing students all the time reached its peak in the early part of the 21st century, during the George W. Bush No Child Left Behind era (when I was a fifth-grader or so) and has slightly weakened since then. But yes, standardized testing is still very much a thing. And it certainly has changed forms since 2002 and one of those changes is that the new tests have become (or at least have been forced to advertise themselves as being) "Common Core aligned." But the Common Core itself doesn't insist upon these tests in any real way. It's really just a list of standards. In fact, the folks who created the Common Core probably just assumed that new tests would be created and implemented based on the new standards, so they didn't have to explicitly say so. Testing is just a constant. Blaming the Common Core for the testing that predated it for decades is kind of like blaming the current president for a perennial problem like the national debt. (Hey, for once, here's something that is not actually this president's fault!)
2. The Common Core is not about the federal government taking over education
This has died down a bit lately, but for a while there was definitely a strong tendency to equate the Common Core with President Obama and the “federal overreach” of his administration. Now (to use that president’s favorite catchphrase) let me be clear: it is true that there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to do anything involving education. (Although arguably the 9th Amendment could be used to argue that the children of the United States have the right to an education. But then one could counter with the 10th Amendment, which says that anything not specifically delegated to the federal government ought to be left to the states. Which only gives credence to my idea that our nation is divided into “9th Amendment people” and “10th Amendment people” and possibly has been all the way back to our founding.) But Barack Obama did not create the Department of Education; Jimmy Carter did. Nor did Obama create the movement towards “standards and accountability” - that began in the 80's or 90's (again, depending exactly how we define it) and has raged ever since then.
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| Probably not even the dumbest take on Common Core ever written. |
More importantly, the Common Core is not actually a federal program. In fact, one of the groups that sponsored its creation was the National Governor’s Council - clearly a state-level organization. And it was left up to each individual state whether to adopt the Common Core or develop its own set of standards. Only forty-two states currently use the Common Core as their set of standards, though the number was once as high as forty-five (and Minnesota insists on being the “sometimes Y” of the bunch, accepting the ELA Standards but not the Math ones, for some personal Minnesotan reason.) All the federal government actually did was offer incentives (in the form of grant money) to states who adopted the Common Core. Now, I suppose one could argue that tying federal money to the adoption of these standards is in itself a form of federal overreach, but it is not the same as Common Core actually being a federal program. And it is not unprecedented - the federal government was arguably more directly involved in education under No Child Left Behind, in the George W. Bush years discussed above.
Also, the most recent education bill passed by the federal government in 2015 explicitly prohibits them from offering any further incentives to states for adopting the Common Core. So even if there was a legitimate gripe there at one point, it’s been resolved. And you guys won.
3. The Common Core did not “change math”
This is the most annoying one to me. And I suspect that anyone who isn’t directly involved in education (or weirdly, inexplicably knowledgeable about its intricacies) most likely thinks of this sort of thing when they hear the words “Common Core.” Because there are a ton of Facebook posts out there that feature parents or teachers complaining about “Common Core math.” (If you don't know what I'm talking about, here is a good sampling, though it's not from Facebook so the level of discourse is very slightly higher.) And those posts tend to get a lot of comments. And those comments all seem to harp on the same point, which is that the Common Core has “changed” the way math has taught.
First of all, no. It hasn’t. It doesn’t prescribe any teaching methods.
But some of the resources that have been developed (by other organizations, most of which are for-profit corporations, which may be an issue but a separate one) to be “aligned” to the Common Core do introduce mathematical concepts in a different way than many of us were taught. They put more of an emphasis on estimation as a way of solving problems; they expose students to different strategies for mental problem-solving; they are concerned with developing students’ “number sense” or “mathematical literacy.” And yes, some of the strategies they use to achieve these goals may look confusing to someone who sees them out of context. (And of course, there are also just poorly-worded questions and teachers who teach concepts poorly, but that is true regardless of the subject or standards being used.)
But there is a good reason why we are focusing on those things now instead of just teaching math the same way it has always been taught. Because, by and large, that way didn’t work. Yes, traditional math instruction works for some people. Some people just “get it.” I was one of them. But many others don’t just “get it” and we have finally decided to stop just trying the same thing over and over, expecting (or demanding) different results. So although math itself has not changed, the way math is being taught is (in some places, but not everywhere) a bit different.
One thing I find annoying about this is that the people who complain about the “new math” that their kids bring home are very often the same people who will take any opportunity to tell you about how much they hated or sucked at math when they were students, how they just never understood what the teacher was talking about, how it just seemed like a bunch of meaningless numbers and letters. Well, these new approaches are an attempt to address that concern. (And by the way, I think this correlation is more than just incidental. I think that people who do legitimately understand math will also be able to understand or figure out the new approaches to teaching it. So there’s a contradiction here - you can’t argue that the traditional way of doing things was effective if you are also living proof that it is not.)
And rather than being intended to supplant the “traditional way” of doing math - lining up two numbers to subtract them, for instance - most of the time the “new approaches” are aimed at either deepening kids’ understanding of mathematical concepts or giving them another strategy for problem-solving. In this latter case, whining that the traditional way of solving math problems is no longer the only way children are taught starts to look a lot like complaining that we now make an effort to be inclusive of holidays other than Christmas.
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| Bo Burnham, creator of the only "new math" that matters. |
Which brings me to my next point: criticism of “Common Core math” is often couched in vaguely culture-war-y language, which suggests that “Common Core math” is part of a larger movement - either to eliminate facts and replace them with guesses or to coddle kids by never telling them when they’re wrong. Either it’s an instrument in the service of relativism or of being overprotective of children. Both of which are undeniably associated with certain politics (though this doesn’t always make sense.) And that gets us back, once again, to Obama.
It all works together to create a pretty cohesive narrative. Obama is using the federal government to take over education, implement unpopular standardized tests, and force a politically-correct, participation-trophy curriculum down the throats of our nation’s children. Except that no part of that is actually true.
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