College, Career Readiness Standards Compared to 'Emperor's New Clothes'

College and career readiness standards proposed by Common Core State Standards Initiative will decrease, not increase, student achievement and harm national economic and scientific competitiveness, University of Arkansas professor Sandra Stotsky wrote in a critique published this month by the Pioneer Institute.

The critique urges local and state school officials and legislators to get involved in the discussion about national education standards.

This is the third report Stotsky, who holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Teacher Quality in the university's department of education reform, has co-written critiquing the proposed national standards since March. She is an appointed member of the Validation Committee of Common Core, an initiative of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Pioneer Institute is a nonpartisan public policy think tank based in Boston.

Governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia have committed to developing a common core of state standards in English language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.

In "The Emperor's New Clothes: National Assessments Based on Weak 'College and Career Readiness Standards'," Stotsky teamed with co-author Ze'ev Wurman, an engineer in the high tech industry in Silicon Valley, Calif., and former senior policy adviser with the U.S. Department of Education. Stotsky served as senior associate commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999 to 2003, during which time she directed complete revisions of the state's licensing regulations, licensure tests for K-12 educators and pre-K-12 standards in 10 subject areas.

According to the new critique, Common Core is unclear about what readiness for college and the workplace means and what the implications of the concept are for high school graduation requirements and admission requirements in post-secondary institutions.

The authors recommend that state boards of education and state legislatures hold public and professional discussions about what college readiness should mean for enrollment in credit-bearing freshman courses in the different kinds of post-secondary institutions in their state and develop plans to obtain the financial and other resources needed to realign teacher certification standards and K-16 education systems to Common Core's standards. The federal government is expected to fund only the cost of developing new common assessments, according to the report. Local school boards and district superintendents should also sponsor in-school and grade-level discussions of what college readiness and career readiness mean in their community, of the quality, clarity and rigor of Common Core's proposed grade-level standards, and how to ensure parent input into local curriculum and instruction.

The report also offers recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education, Congress and Common Core. It can be read on the Pioneer Institute Web site. It shows fundamental changes that should be made to Common Core's mathematics and English language arts standards before states adopt them so that test developers can develop tests that reflect the level of curricular expectations Common Core claims to offer and make college readiness mean readiness for coursework that is at least as demanding as current college freshman coursework is.

In April and May, Stotsky moderated three forums in Arkansas about the proposed standards.