Ze’ev Wurman, a high-tech executive in Silicon Valley active in developing California’s standards and assessments in the mid-1990s, and Sandy Stotsky, one of the nation’s top experts on academic standards, authored our research, Race to the Middle?, chronicling the numerous weaknesses in previous drafts of the common core standards drafts, as well as the soft conceptual underpinning for the whole effort.

In today’s Boston Globe, they come out swinging on the public comment drafts. This is a must read, as it encapsulates many of the major points. Look for more on this from Pioneer.

1. Standards are the lifeblood of student achievement in public schools; and that includes even those site-based managed schools that are based on parental choice. You all know the stories of charters and voucher programs that don’t deliver the kind of transformational improvement we all want. In MA, our charters for the most part are of a higher quality than elsewhere and far outperform their district counterparts. In part that is because of the great upfront business planning/vetting and accountability/closure processes (yes, regulation), but it is even more because MA has set really high academic standards, assessments, and teacher testing. Charters are effective at attaining goals but you have to set high academic goals for them to be good schools with high-achieving students. Arizona, with its numerous but too often lower quality charter schools, take note.

2. The March common core academic standards drafts, notwithstanding improvements that we see on the math side and also on the ELA side, still fall way short of what Massachusetts or Minnesota have. We have systematically gone through the previous drafts and we have also gone through the latest drafts. We are not there, and not even close. There are lots of problems with specific ELA and Math standards, but there are also two larger points: (1) the wonderful lists included in the appendices are not binding, and (2) the end goal or frame for this whole exercise is the College and Career Readiness standards, which are skills-based gobbledy-gook. And the skills focus will govern the application of the ELA and math standards, and even more so the assessments.

Three broader points:
1. Checker Finn (see his comment on Jay Greene’s blog) is right to lament good-on-paper-only states, but the creation of new federal standards will not help move that any faster. In fact, the development of all new federal standards will likely slow or in fact reverse the process and gains in some states. Perhaps on that score some federal incentives to ensure implementation of state standards would be a more effective approach. After all, the changes entailed by standards are enormous, and they include local implementation by districts of the standards, assessments, and in most cases even teacher testing (which ought to be aligned with the new standards). Were the provisions of NCLB so quickly and so rigorously implemented? (Hate to say it, Checker, but federal officials have just as much grease in their hair as state officials.)

2. Why aren’t we moving forward based on an approach where the federal government sets a “floor” (basically minimum requirements, not “word for word” or 85% adoption of national standards as CCSSIers/ Duncan laid down) with, going forward, guarantees of flexibility for states to develop even higher standards? (See the comments of the NY Times’ Sam Dillon in this regard in a New American magazine article.) Or why not provide financial incentives for states to improve on NAEP scores and leave it to them to get it done? Massachusetts is not alone in finding that a much more comfortable fit, rather than letting decisions on standards move to Washington, where we know so much, ahem, good work goes on.

3. There are many reasons to think this is going to die of its own weight, but I’ll stick to two reasons:

a. There are so many jurisdictional trip wires on the path to moving forward that it is bound to blow up. The CCSSO, the NGA and USED have crossed into the jurisdiction of (1) Congress on the use of Title I funds in a coercive fashion; (2) many state legislatures which will want to review the intersection with key provisions of their respective statutory reforms of education; and (3) some boards of education, which will want to preserve their roles in education policy.

b. A number of states that have focused on standards (VA, CA, MN, and TX) have begun peeling off.

We certainly hope that we can list Massachusetts among the states who insist on higher standards than what the NGA/CCSSO have offered us.

Virginia won’t jump onboard a push for national K-12 standards if it means dumping the state’s standardized test, the governor and other state officials said.
…
Some of the proposed English and math benchmarks already are partially embedded in Virginia’s standardized test, known as the Standards of Learning, or SOL, educators said.

While Gov. Robert F. McDonnell supports the idea of international benchmarks, he said he does not want to substitute the core English and math standards for the SOL’s.

“The commonwealth’s policies have demonstrated a significant commitment to accountability, benchmarks and positive education reform,’’ McDonnell said in a statement. “While we support the development of internationally benchmarked targets, we do not have a desire to substitute the common core standards for our Standards of Learning.”…

“We are 15 years into a successful standards-based reform,’’ Pyle said. “There is no discussion on the Board of Education about abandoning the Standards of Learning.”

The dominoes are starting to fall. See Pioneer’s recent report, Race to the Middle, on the recent draft of the proposed national standards. And look for an additional piece. Soon.

One of the lowlights of those meetings was PERAC Executive Director Joseph Connarton’s crude mocking of the Professor at one point. It was all part of the odd dynamic in that room — the central conflict was between Connarton (who is appointed by a board that has several gubernatorial appointees) and Commission Chair Alicia Munnell and Professor Diamond (both appointed by the Governor).

Well, it seems that Diamond is going to be ok. Obama is going to appoint him to the Federal Reserve.