Education Week - April 23, 2014 - S36

EDUCATION WEEK APRIL 23, 2014
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Common Core > www.edweek.org/go/core-in-action
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE S35
dards was amended to eliminate that repeal provision
before it was approved by a Senate committee.
Despite the obvious appetite among some conservative
activists for repealing the common core, Mr.
Vander Hart attributed some of the failure to drop the
standards to an obligation felt by some Republican lawmakers
to maintain partisan unity in a year featuring
dozens of gubernatorial elections.
"There's just not a lot of will for some legislators to go
up against incumbent governors in their own party,"
he said.
'DO THEY THINK WE'RE DUMB?'
But Heather Crossin, an activist with the Indiana
group Hoosiers Against Common Core, said that if Gov.
Pence decided to stick with the common core in any
form, he would face the wrath of standards opponents
in 2016, when he's up for re-election.
Although the common-core backlash has arguably
been most successful in Indiana, the actual effectiveness
of that opposition might be well short of what
many common-core opponents might hope for when
they envision a broad collapse for the standards.
As of press time in mid-April, the Indiana state board
of education-which voted unanimously to adopt the
common core in 2010-was close to adopting new content
standards in English/language arts and mathematics.

The legislation signed in Indiana to repeal the com-
mon core, however, does not mean the standards will
disappear from the state altogether. On the contrary,
the new standards on track to adoption by the board
combine previous content standards in Indiana with
hefty doses of the common core. Many state officials
say the new standards are being created the right way.
But common-core opponents in Indiana have reacted
angrily, and the backlash to the new standards has
merged with the pre-existing resistance to the common
core. Hoosiers Against Common Core produced a
report, for example, that said the state's effort to craft
new standards was a farce, since many common-core
standards would remain.
At a public hearing in February on the draft version
of Indiana's standards, parent Jill Olecki testified that
state officials were still clinging to the common core to
satisfy the federal Education Department.
"Do they think we're dumb?" she asked.
Taking a different path, the Florida state school
board earlier this year approved additions to the common-core
standards after taking suggestions from the
public. The additions covered such topics as cursive
handwriting and calculus. Florida and other states, including
Georgia and Oklahoma, have also dropped out
of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Careers, or PARCC, one of two state consortia
developing common-core-aligned assessments.
MANNING THE BARRICADES
The spate of activity and interest, however, doesn't
mean common-core opponents should take heart, said
Michael Brickman, the national policy director at the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, a think
tank that backs the standards. The main energy behind
the resistance, he contends, comes from "a small
group on the left and the right of very passionate people"
who often don't address the issue of what constitutes
good standards versus bad standards.
"The facts have not always aligned with some of the
things you're seeing out there in social media and elsewhere,"
Mr. Brickman said.
What's more, although there may be some political
convergence on the right and left in opposing the common
core, specific messages from conservatives about
problems with the standards aren't always warmly
welcomed by liberals and vice versa. The lack of alignment
in their agendas may hamstring efforts to build a
more effective push against the common core.
High-profile friends of the common core, meanwhile,
are manning the barricades to defend the standards
against the ongoing pushback and open new fronts in
the battle for public attention.
For example, the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy
Center, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation,
and the Hunt Institute, a think tank in Durham, N.C.,
recently announced a new partnership to firm up support
for the common core while battling what Delaware
Gov. Markell said was a politicized movement against
the standards.
"What we didn't expect was a lot of misinformation
that would be spread around the country about what
these standards are," Gov. Markell said at a recent public
event. "We have to invest the time and we have to invest
the effort to make sure that the value of these standards
is communicated to people across the country." n
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Education Week - April 23, 2014

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