Penna Dexter

Common Core is the latest iteration of the failed idea that the federal government should control education. 

Implementation of Common Core was begun under the Obama Administration. It was supposed to increase American students’ “college and career readiness.”

The results are in on Common Core and they’re pretty discouraging. Common Core was fully phased in three years ago and, for three years, scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have been dropping. 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card, is given every other year to fourth and eighth graders in reading and math. This year, only one third of students in these two grades reached proficiency in math and reading.

The Federalist’s Joy Pullman points out that “on the same day the NAEP results were released, the college testing organization ACT released a report showing that college preparedness in English and math is at seniors’ lowest levels in 15 years.” 

The class of 2019, the first to have experienced all four years of high school under Common Core, is the worst prepared for college in 15 years.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos called the results “devastating.” “The country,” she says “is in a student achievement crisis, and …it has continued to worsen, especially for our most vulnerable students.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke points out that taxpayers have poured nearly two trillion dollars into an effort to narrow “achievement gaps between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers.” The disparity in learning is about four years, a gap that hasn’t changed in nearly fifty years. 

In misguided efforts to meet Common Core goals and diminish this achievement disparity, school systems across the country are abolishing honors classes, teaching how math has been used to oppress people, and admitting truant students into gifted schools. 

When federal programs like Common Core seek to equalize educational achievement, they pull good districts down.