Dive Brief:
- Award-winning New York Principal Carol Burris detailed what she calls the four "flimflams" of the Common Core in a Washington Post op-ed.
- Burris, who once supported the national benchmarks, takes issue with the following arguments: The Common Core standards are internationally benchmarked and grounded in research; they are merely goal posts and do not tell teachers how to teach; they will close the achievement gap; the problems with the standards can be fixed at the state and local level.
- According to Burris, these "flimflams" are perpetuated by foundations and think tanks that have received lots of money from the Gates Foundation and others to spread the gospel.
Dive Insight:
For each of the "flimflams" Burris details inconsistencies in the thinking. For example, with the argument that the problems with the standards can be fixed at the state and local level, Burris writes: "Nothing could be further from the truth. The Common Core standards were built to be national standards. In order to make sure they could not be altered at the state level, they were copyrighted, despite Ms. Martin’s claim to the contrary during the debate. In addition, adopting states signed a memorandum of understanding that they would not alter any of the standards, although they could add some additional standards. You can find that the Common Core Memorandum of Understanding on Page 129 of Delaware’s Race to the Top application which can be found here."
Perhaps this is why Indiana had to "opt" out of the Common Core to create its own standards, which looked almost identical to the Common Core? Indiana was unable to mold the standards ever so slightly, so it instead had to drop them entirely.