[Below is an excerpt of Heartland Research Fellow Joy Pullmann’s May 22, 2013 testimony before the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education in opposition to the state adopting Common Core education standards. For the full testimony, please click on the PDF link above.]
Common Core has never been pilot tested anywhere in the world. It is entirely experimental. So we have no proof that what it demands of kids, and how, improves their achievement. Further, to assume that one progression of learning fits every one of the 50 million American, or 865,000 Wisconsin, students is beyond arrogant—it is an affront to human diversity, freedom, and dignity.
State leaders were told several things about Common Core to get them to sign it. From the memorandum of agreement governors and state chief school officers signed, those promises included: “a state-led process”; standards would include “rigorous content and skills,” “be internationally benchmarked”, and “research and evidence based”; that “no state will see a decrease in the level of student expectations”; and the organizations writing Common Core would “establish an ongoing development process that can support continuous improvement of this first version.”[1] None of these promises were kept, as you will see.
[1] “Common Core Standards Memorandum of Agreement,” Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association Center for Best Practices: http://www.moagainstcommoncore.com/commonstandardsmoa.doc.
Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
