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The Common Core and Flying Carpet Soutions

In a recent article Alice Walton comments on the new Common Core State Standards. She establishes that the Common Core has many flaws, particularly that many students develop at differing rates, and a common curriculum demanding a lock-step approach to education is wrong, and wrong from the get-go.http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/10/23/the-science-of-the-common-core-experts-weigh-in-on-its-developmental-appropriateness/

My response to this article follows. 

The article is accurate in almost every respect. Let me generalize. One of four flying carpet solutions to the educational mess our nation finds itself are regularly offered. These are grandiose plans advertizing that in a single and simplistic stroke can bring a failing system to the forefront of excellence in education - worldwide. (a) Change the curriculum. (b) Put education on a sound business model. (c) Reduce class sizes. (d) Make education fun. Currently, American education system is suffering the first of these. Despite the number of headliner educator and politician proponents, it will dissemble in time, just as it has multiple times previously. All four solutions involve top-down systemic changes, the only kind "big education" can comprehend and propose.

Always missing from the equation are the kids themselves - and their parents. Unless kids understand the importance of learning, and parents demand excellence rather than abrogate their responsibilities, big solutions cannot and will not work.

What about the other "big" solutions? (b) has been attempted, e.g. Bainbridge schools with limited success, and (c) has be studied extensively with non conclusive findings - at least in California. Indeed, the conclusion was that small class sizes have little effect on actual learning. And (d)? Learning is not always fun. It is work, at least it has been for me. The fun part comes after learning and it is applied to interesting problems.

On high stakes testing. With or without big solutions, high stakes testing will continue. Opting out is not an honest or true option. If the system cannot be measured, it has little value in a world dominated by measured outcomes. Upon a close examination of these tests, it becomes apparent that problems are of limited types, and they cycle every few years.
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