Common Core: Si oder nyet?

I shudder to bring this issue up, as I fear it will only lead to denunciation of conservatives for being paranoid or whatever. But education stuff interests me and it is kinda big news at the moment, so let's talk about Common Core.

No doubt you've at least heard the term before now, but if you're unclear on the details, well, Common Core is just what it sounds like--an effort to standardize the curriculum and objectives in primary and secondary schools nationwide. According to the official website, the standards, which so far have been adopted by all but five states, "focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well." Erm, okay. In layman's terms, it basically means "teach more stuff sooner."

Not a bad idea, though whether the suggested benchmarks per grade will accomplish that is anyone's guess. Third-graders should have basic comprehension of fractions and their place on the number line, while sixth-graders should begin learning about ratios, probability, and some basic statistics. In language arts, fourth-graders ought to be able to "compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided"; for eighth-graders, it's "analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new."

Okay, especially in the reading category, there's no way this won't get dumbed down quite a bit in the classroom. But it seems fairly innocuous on the surface. And yet, it's gotten a ton of pushback, especially from grassroots conservatives and some religious (especially Catholic) groups. Why?

Well, in summary, a lot of people see it as No Child Left Behind, only more invasive and altogether crappier. A lot of objections have been made about the quality of education kids would be receiving under these goalposts. High schoolers, for example, would be reading far less literature in favor of nonfiction texts, and many important documents, historical as well as literary, would be presented with little or no explanation of background context. Or, students will have to comprehend them through lots of "creative" mechanisms, like featuring the Gettysburg Address as a "word cloud." (If someone knows what this is, please explain it to me.) So, long story short, there's a lot of concern about the complexity and sheer novelty of the project.

Others are worried not only about this, but about the government possibly using this to create a national database tracking all our kids and so on. Blogger Michelle Malkin, for example, has argued that Common Core is connected to new federal programs requiring schools to track everything from household voting status to religious affiliation to dental records. Some Catholic publications, meanwhile, have claimed that this data-collection effort is completely unsupervised, and expressed concerns that it might be used to force more direct oversight of diocesan and private schools.

So how realistic are these worries? Hard to say. It's not exactly like this was the product of any left-wing Obama goons (at least to begin with); it originated under Dubya in '07, making it brought to you by the same guys who gave you those fluorescent bulbs and the jacked-up Daylight Savings Time schedule. And whatever claims may be made about it being a plot by D.C. to subvert the states, the Common Core standards were largely developed by state governors and their advisers, as defenders of the program have pointed out. Besides, it's not hard to find liberals who also are not fans of the program, or at least aspects of its implementation. Even many urban school teachers are siding against the new curriculum, because of its lack of balance and flexibility. As for the privacy concerns, I don't blame those who are objecting, especially in the wake of all the agency corruption scandals this year; but it's not clear whether all this will pan out.

In my opinion, the real problem with Common Core isn't necessarily any tracking database, or even the controversial educational standards themselves. The problem is this persistent notion of a "one-size-fits-all" approach, especially when applied from the top down. When you consider the wide range of school conditions across the U.S.--urban, suburban, and rural; some with strong academic histories, others not so much--it should be obvious that they can't all be made to meet a single benchmark. Plus, it goes completely against the decentralized ethos that is so much a part of American conservatism. Schools need some oversight, but that should be as localized as possible. Even at the state level, there are problems in trying to run too much; taking it to the national level is just asking for trouble.

Common Core probably won't be as bad as some of its critics worry. But it's probably not the best way to improve education, either.