Back in March I predicted, prematurely, that the wheels were coming off of the national standards train. Andy Rotherham had declared that the adoption of national standards was “close to a done deal,” but then the Wall Street Journal came out with an editorial strongly opposing national standards.
I thought that would derail the Gates-fueled and Obama/Duncan enforced train, but it did not. As it turns out, states in the midst of a severe budgetary pinch are inclined to promise a lot in exchange for federal and Gates dollars now.
But all of those state promises to revise their standards, change their curriculum, change their professional development, and adopt new tests were all about steps that would occur far in the future. Now that the federal money was already handed out and new money is unlikely to be forthcoming given the midterm election, the states may change their tune. The states are like the kind of person who, when you stop buying her all of those flowers and expensive dinners, may not keep telling you how handsome and smart you are — and the wedding plans are probably in jeopardy.
To see how the tide is turning, check out this piece by Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute in the Boston Globe. As Jim writes:
With Rick Perry said to be a shoo-in for the head of the Republican Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), which was one of a handful of lead groups pushing states to adopt national standards, may find itself in deep trouble. In fact, Perry, as the head of the RGA, may force the National Governors Association, which together the CCSSO, Achieve Inc., and the Gates Foundation, acted as cheerleaders for national standards, to revisit its position in support of national standards….
The opening that Governor Perry has on this issue is obvious and rumor has it that he is thinking very seriously about actions that reassert state control over the education agenda (and leverage the RGA to do so). The clearest place for Perry to begin is with the dozens of states that did not participate in Race to the Top. There are also key states that did participate, and in the case of New Jersey, California and Indiana even adopted the national standards, but did not win any RTT money.
The key states to watch are California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia. In addition to being states that either did not adopt the national standards, or adopted them and did not win federal funds, they have one additional and important commonality among them: They have had higher standards than most other states in the nation.
I think Jim Stergios is spot-on. And as I’ve written before, getting agreement on national standards is almost politically impossible given that we are a large and diverse country with legitimate and competing visions of what schools should look like. You could get states to pledge their support but as we are now seeing, getting the details in place is inevitably very difficult.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
This is really quite sad. The problem is people see standards as mandates and too many people have an unrealistic fear aversion to anything with the word “national” or “federal government” associated with it.
The irony is that so many people, who criticize public education and point to our trailing the rest of the world in test scores, ignore the fact that all those nations have national standards and national curriculum.
Michael-
Canada has neither national standards nor a national curriculum, and beats the stuffing out of the United States.
And a lot of the countries that do worse than we do have national standards. So, national standards seem neither necessary nor sufficient for success.
I have spent a great deal of time reading the implementation documents on CC from CCSSO, various govt agencies, and the coordinating nonprofits.
There is a consistent movement away from academic content especially in the advocacy for the new science standards.
It is striking how often the rationale is plausible but factually wrong if you know the area or a feel-good fallacy.
Over and over again you realize, if the advocates have to come up with false rationales, where is this really taking us as a country?
Why?
Can’t help but notice that a Google Ad appears at tne end of Jay’s column; the ad is for America’s Choice and the tagline reads “No other company has leading Common Core officials on staff but us!” There is a link to their site so I went there and looked at what they had to say about Common Core standards. There are two clips one can watch of Phil Daro who is listed as something like “Math Chair, Common Core standards”. His credential does not incllude a math PhD for anyone interested. I could only stomach one of the clips. The site is here.
At the end of it, he talked about how the standard are about “teaching better”. He cites Singapore’s mission statement, and the camera zooms in a document from Singapore’s Ministry of Education that exhorts “Teach less, learn more” In fact, he ends his spiel with those words. Those in the know, are aware that Singapore is in the throes of copying some of the US’ worst features of math education in the mistaken belief that the key to producing innovative and creative individuals (of which the US has always had) lies in the education system. I believe that Singapore, like Japan who followed the same track a few years ago, will–like Japan–see the error of her ways and go back to more sensible ways. In the meantime, the mantra of “teach less, learn more” is in danger of become even more mainstream in the edu thoughtworld than it ever has been with the admonition that “even Singapore is saying it.”
If you’re interested in our (US Coaition for World Class Math) critique of the CC standards for math,it’s here.
In the meantime, Jay’s post is one of the most encouraging I’ve read in months; i.e., that states will lose interest for the reasons he’s outlined. I hope Jay is right. I’d certainly hate to see the Phil Daro-inspired professional development courses and open-ended assessments that would inevitably spring from these standards.
My bad; the link to what I thought was America’s Choice website was for Jay Greene’s blog. Here’s the link to the Phil Daro video that I talked about in my comment above.
Michael,
In response to “The irony is that so many people, who criticize public education and point to our trailing the rest of the world in test scores, ignore the fact that all those nations have national standards and national curriculum”
I wonder if “those nations” tolerate textbook companies that peddle junk.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/reform_math_1.html
OR if their “STEM Advisory Committee” actually has STEM Ph.D.s (1 out of 19, really?) http://tinyurl.com/2fsj4j6
Where is this really taking us as a country?
Click to access nmsi_factsheet_dyk.pdf