Why States Are Leaving Common Core in Droves
20th September 2018
After less than 10 years in the classroom, Common Core could soon be on its way out.
The Obama administration introduced Common Core in 2010, imposing burdensome new standards and tests in an attempt to create uniform educational content across the nation. Despite loud objections from parents, teachers, school leaders, and state officials, 46 states ultimately adopted the standards due to a combination of funding carrots and regulatory sticks.
But over the past few years, states have begun to reclaim their authority to set educational standards. Approximately a quarter of participating states have either downgraded their participation or withdrawn completely from the two new testing consortia introduced by Common Core.
Having a single set of educational standards sounds like a good idea — let’s find out what kids need to know and make sure everybody is pulling in the same correct direction right? But what it does is introduce a Single Point of Failure, i.e. if ideologues get control of whoever is in charge of determining those standards, POOF instant indoctrination. This is why ideologues try to get everything pulled up to the Federal level, because it’s easier to capture a Federal agency bureaucracy than to slog through fifty states doing so.