If you believe the state and federal government should be teaching local school board members a thing or two, I’d love to share a cautionary tale. It’s one you’ve probably never heard and I wouldn’t blame you if you doubted its veracity … but if you research it, you’ll find I’m sharing the plain truth.
It’s the story of how Indiana’s classroom standards were replaced with a set known as the Common Core standards. Despite what you’ve seen on Facebook, Common Core is not a system of stupid math problems. Standards are adopted by each state to make sure students are learning what they should. For example, in third grade, a student should be able to compute polygon perimeters and grasp the difference between adjectives and adverbs. Indiana adopted a set of standards for every subject and grade level. Teachers add the magic that turns drab standards into captivating lessons.
In the late 2000s, the National Governors Association – a key source of Republican policy – was worried about inconsistencies in the education American children were receiving. In theory, third-graders should learn the same math skills whether they live in Indiana, Texas, or Hawaii. The reality was quite different. When United Airlines transferred hundreds of San Francisco employees and their families to its new Indianapolis maintenance facility, Hendricks County school districts discovered the average California student was as much as a year behind the average Hoosier.
The NGA developed a common set of standards and gave it the Common Core name. No governor was a stronger proponent than Mitchell R. Daniels. Indiana’s Man Mitch pushed to make us one of the first states to adopt Common Core. Hoosier legislators approved it and rushed to send out mailings expressing how proud they were to support this innovative education concept. And teachers and principals spent hundreds of hours redesigning all of their lesson plans to match the subtle differences between Common Core and Indiana’s Academic Standards.
President Obama’s Education Secretary was so impressed with Common Core that he decided a new federal school grant program would only be available in states that had adopted it. In simple terms, one party had a brilliant idea, and the other party said, “That’s brilliant! We agree with you!”
When our neighbors who see conspiracies everywhere heard the Obama administration was pushing some crazy socialist thing called Common Core, they demanded Indiana put a stop to it and go back to … well, whatever it was Indiana was doing before we got tricked. Legislators immediately replaced Common Core with a quickly drafted set of new standards called … the new Indiana Academic Standards. Then they rushed to send out mailings expressing how proud they were to have eliminated such a flawed education concept.
And once again, teachers and principals spent hundreds of hours redesigning all of their lesson plans to match the subtle differences between Indiana’s new standards and Common Core. Plus, instead of buying the same textbooks used by the three dozen states that rely on Common Core, Indiana school districts have to buy significantly more expensive versions customized for Indiana’s unique set of standards.
Wonder why I don’t look to the Statehouse and Washington as models of effective governance?