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Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022
Between the State and the Schoolhouse examines the Common Core State Standards from the initiative’s promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes. Situating the standards in the long history of state and federal efforts to shape education, the book describes a series of critical lessons that highlight the political and structural challenges of large-scale, top-down reforms.
Education policy expert Tom Loveless argues that there are too many layers between the state and the classroom for a national standards approach to be effective. Specifically, he emphasizes the significant gap between states’ roles in designing education policy and teachers’ roles as implementers of policy. In addition, he asserts that top-down policies are unpredictable, subject to political and ideological pressures, and vulnerable to the pendulum effect as new reforms emerge in response to previous ones.
One of the most ambitious education reforms of the past century, the Common Core aimed to raise student success, prepare larger numbers of students for both college and careers, and close achievement gaps. Yet, as Loveless documents, a decade later there remains a lack of significant positive impact on student learning.
Between the State and the Schoolhouse marks an important contribution to the debate over the standards movement and the role of federal and state governments in education reform.
Between the State and the Schoolhouse examines the Common Core State Standards from the initiative’s promising beginnings to its disappointing outcomes. Situating the standards in the long history of state and federal efforts to shape education, the book describes a series of critical lessons that highlight the political and structural challenges of large-scale, top-down reforms.
Education policy expert Tom Loveless argues that there are too many layers between the state and the classroom for a national standards approach to be effective. Specifically, he emphasizes the significant gap between states’ roles in designing education policy and teachers’ roles as implementers of policy. In addition, he asserts that top-down policies are unpredictable, subject to political and ideological pressures, and vulnerable to the pendulum effect as new reforms emerge in response to previous ones.
One of the most ambitious education reforms of the past century, the Common Core aimed to raise student success, prepare larger numbers of students for both college and careers, and close achievement gaps. Yet, as Loveless documents, a decade later there remains a lack of significant positive impact on student learning.
Between the State and the Schoolhouse marks an important contribution to the debate over the standards movement and the role of federal and state governments in education reform.
- GenresEducation
224 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2021
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July 27, 2021
Loveless details the inadequacies in the implementation of the standards. Mainly, they were not grassroots enough. Top-down. He also gives the history of standards so that the reader can place them within history. In short, this is a necessary-to-know book for people who want to speak about standards intelligently.
It is polite. If I were to add anything that isn't commonly recognized it is that standards follow the American tradition of hucksterism. They are simply things to make money or prestige on at the higher levels. The math standards are funny because of a simple sentence or two that future year standards cannot be taught with any assessment. Sounds innocent, right? Not at all. First, it locks out other curriculums such as Singapore Math or Japan Math (They're bad!), allowing one of the authors to release texts for Common Core Math. In other areas, this would be called self-dealing. In education, where everyone is a professional, the author is merely providing a curriculum in both alignment and spirit. How nice. ;-)
Also, that one sentence makes acceleration very difficult - as do the methods being used to teach the standards. Ahh, that's politics - which is the point of the book!
It is polite. If I were to add anything that isn't commonly recognized it is that standards follow the American tradition of hucksterism. They are simply things to make money or prestige on at the higher levels. The math standards are funny because of a simple sentence or two that future year standards cannot be taught with any assessment. Sounds innocent, right? Not at all. First, it locks out other curriculums such as Singapore Math or Japan Math (They're bad!), allowing one of the authors to release texts for Common Core Math. In other areas, this would be called self-dealing. In education, where everyone is a professional, the author is merely providing a curriculum in both alignment and spirit. How nice. ;-)
Also, that one sentence makes acceleration very difficult - as do the methods being used to teach the standards. Ahh, that's politics - which is the point of the book!
Displaying 1 of 1 review