Education Week - February 4, 2015 - 25

Low Standards Do a Disservice to All
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23
their accomplishments and requested that Ms. Jones
provide more opportunities for them to engage with
one another.
These kinds of moments are happening in classrooms
all over the country. We have to be willing to
hold high expectations for all students, believe they
can get there, and provide them with the steps to
reach them. Investments in students' academic lives
require more than just the procurement of iPads or
new textbooks.
Civil and human rights groups, including the National
Urban League, the National Council of La
Raza, the naacp, the League of United Latin American
Citizens, the Southeast Asia Resource Action
Center, the National
Indian Education Association,
and the Mexican
American Legal Defense
and Educational Fund,
support the common core,
because minority and lowincome
students, students
with disabilities, and English-language
learners
deserve consistent, higher
standards. Civil rights
groups expect policymakers
to make the necessary
investments-both financially
and pedagogically-
to support the instruction
of the common core. It's
the only way that teachers,
students, and parents
will be able to realize the
potential of the standards.
Educators who have been implementing the standards
in their classrooms for the last couple of years
and have the resources and support of their states or
districts have already seen remarkable improvement
in student performance. Kentucky, the first state to
implement the common core, increased the percentage
of high school graduates ready for college and careers
from 34 percent in 2010 to 62 percent in 2014,
according to an online opinion essay by Terry Holliday,
the state's education commissioner. Tennessee
and the District of Columbia, both of which were early
adopters, led the country in student gains in 2013 on
iStockphoto
the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or
naep. According to a 2014 poll from Scholastic, the longer
that schools, districts, and states have been using
the standards, the more likely teachers and school
leaders are to say they are working and working well.
But the standards are now under assault from
those who have political rather than educational
agendas. Newly elected state superintendents in
Arizona and Georgia vigorously opposed the standards
on the campaign trail. Gov. Scott Walker of
Wisconsin, a possible presidential candidate, last
year called for his state to repeal the standards (although
he has since backed off that declaration),
and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has engaged in an
all-out political war on the standards. Many state
legislatures are poised to take action on anti-common-core
bills as their
legislative sessions kick
off.
Given Tennessee's
stellar showing on
the most recent naep
exams, it is particularly
regrettable that
Republicans in that
state's legislative body
are eager to jettison
the valuable work of
Gov. Bill Haslam and
the state's recently departed
education commissioner,
Kevin Huffman,
to pacify elements
of their base.
It is unfortunate that
Republican partisans
cannot accept what
leaders in their own party-people like former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Alabama Gov. Bob
Riley, and former U.S. Secretary of Education William
J. Bennett-have long known: Our nation's
most vulnerable children deserve more than we've
given them in the last 60 years. In states and school
districts throughout the country, teachers, parents,
and other community members need to work together
to achieve the promise of consistent, higher
standards for every child in America.
Sixty years after Brown opened the door to educational
opportunity for all, the common-core standards
offer us an opportunity to pass through it. n
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www.edweek.org/go/contact-zone
Charles Taylor Kerchner discusses the widely
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implications for teacher tenure. Read the full post
online, and discover why he thinks teachers' unions
are missing an opportunity.
www.edweek.org/go/vergara
EDUCATION WEEK TEACHER
In Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable, educator Eoin
Lenihan provides strategies to help teachers build
positive relationships with parents. His blog post
"Keep Your Students Close But Your Parents Closer"
is the first of a five-part discussion on effective
teacher-parent communication.
www.edweek.org/go/roundtable-teachers
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EDUCATION WEEK | February 4, 2015 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary | 25
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Education Week - February 4, 2015

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