State Participation in CCSS on the Decline

The Heritage Foundation (March, 14, 2014) released a visual map indicating the current status of implementation of Common Core State Standards throughout the country. No longer can it be claimed that 45 states are implementing the Common Core in toto; not in any newspaper article, blog, or online post. It simply is not true. This dramatic push back from states (many led by grassroots efforts) should give Catholic and private schools a clear reason to seriously re-evaluate their involvement with the Standards. Have they evaluated not only the Standards as they are explicitly written, but also the instructional methodology that the Standards advocate? Are they comfortable with cognitively guided mathematics in the younger grades and the push back of Algebra in high school? Is searching for evidence within the text acceptable when other truths existing outside of the text are not acceptable options on assessments? My sense is that private schools that have implemented Common Core State Standards have already “massaged” either the instructional approach or the Standards themselves to “their way of doing things”.  Whether private schools have accepted some or all of the Standards in order to reap whatever good they can from them, or simply to appear fashionable, all private schools should make such changes only after a thorough needs analysis has been done. These types of major curricular and instructional shifts would only be warranted if historical student achievement data indicated a need for a change. Remember, these Standards have not been field tested. We know that our Catholic and classical school curricula and pedagogy have stood the test of time. Let’s wait and see how this new innovation in educational reform pans out before we jump ship for an untested flat boat.

See the map at http://www.heritage.org/multimedia/infographic/2014/03/not-so-fast-states-increasingly-wary-of-common-core