Walker’s Sinking of the SS Common Core

It’s no secret: Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) does not support Common Core State Standards (CCSS). When Walker asked the state legislature to repeal CCSS in July, conservatives rejoiced. But in their jubilation, is the ideological right selling out Wisconsin children’s education in favor of state’s rights ideology? Yes, though many don’t know it.

You might have heard someone argue the terrible nature of Common Core. Many right-wing groups and notable political leaders predict the downfall of education, pointing to the “flawed” teaching methods and content, particularly Common Core Math. Grown adults seem to find Common Core Math inscrutable. Is it? Well, any person who’s made change without the use of a cash register has successfully performed Common Core Math. People with misconceptions of bundled arithmetic say that it is a “new math”, rather than a technique learned along with the stacked method of addition and subtraction. The frame placed around Common Core Math is either a tragic misunderstanding of the standards’ intent or blatant misinformation. Either way, it’s a red herring.

So if the issue isn’t math, yet conservatives insist Common Core needs to be repealed, other aspects of the standards must be terrible, right? Could the issue be because CCSS is a federal mandate that restricts the ability of states to create curriculum at the local level? Well, no. 1) Standards are not curriculum, they are goals. 2) Curriculum is developed at the local level based on standards. 3) Common Core is a set of voluntarily adopted state-led standards.

Interestingly, the federal government had no role in the development of CCSS. Common Core’s true origin of implementation dates back to 2009 when the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) initiated a state-led effort to improve educational rigor and reignite the U.S. global competitive advantage, which had grown stagnant. The CCSS were constructed as best practices in consultation with educators and standards experts from across the nation. In essence, Common Core is the ultimate exercise of a state’s right to build educational standards in partnership with other states, not a federal mandate imposed on them.

Walker seeks to steer control of educational standards back to the state and local level. “I call on the members of the state Legislature to pass a bill in early January to repeal Common Core and replace it with standards set by people in Wisconsin,” said Walker in July.

That’s fine, but educators in the state view Common Core favorably. Why scrap a program that works? In the interest of saving money, it is fiscally irresponsible to lay waste to good standards because of politics. The governor’s work on Act 10 was sadly necessary to stabilize state finances. The efforts to balance our budget will be squandered through more government waste. This time, Walker will have no one to blame but himself. Either Governor Walker has been duped into believing that Common Core is bad for kids or he is pandering to his voter base.

Not everyone has been fooled. The biggest advocates for CCSS have been the group that knows about educating youth: Education Professionals.

"We know that Wisconsin's current academic standards (Common Core) are more rigorous and are having a real positive impact in classrooms across Wisconsin. By and large, parents, teachers and employers understand that. But, of utmost importance to us, the current standards are good for kids," Department of Instruction (DPI) Communications Officer Tom McCarthy said.

Similar to the difficulty businesses face when government regulations become a constantly moving target, teachers face issues when lawmakers seek to change the educational standards landscape. Appleton Supt. Lee Allinger said, “We can't keep putting our teachers through the adoption of new standards, with all the work that goes into curriculum development ... To keep changing those standards would not be what's best for our students and it would deflate the momentum our teachers have built in implementing these standards (Appleton Post-Crescent).”

While it may be romantic for each school district to create unique standards tailored to their community, in practice it will mean massive redundancy as all districts independently reinvent the wheel, abundant inconsistencies between grades and schools, and patchwork content requirements. Students moving into neighboring districts might be expected to follow a different track, delaying their graduation timing.

With all this repeal-with-no-alternative-plan nonsense, Wisconsin children are being used by ideologues focused on principles unrelated to the quality of education. Conservatives hate being told what is good for them, even if it is a good thing. They have been told that Washington D.C. bureaucrats are pushing a “federally-sponsored ‘consortia’ ” of standards on their state, which infuriates conservatives with fears of encroachment on state sovereignty.

Political opportunists have fooled conservatives by preying on their normally healthy skepticism of government. A murky sea of false information, distorted context, and politicians willing to deceive has made it possible to drown shared standards that work. If Walker stays the course on repealing Common Core, Wisconsin educational standards may be sunk.

(Also published at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Purple Wisconsin)