The Dangers of the Common Core Standards

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The expanding federal role in American life, already most evident in medical care, may also soon effect major changes in education, reinforcing and eventually politicizing deficient public education systems and working to the detriment of private and religious education. Issues surrounding the Common Core Standards, the vehicle through which much of this may happen, were discussed by Maureen van den Berg, legislative assistant for the American Association of Christian Schools, and Allen Carlson, President of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Sept. 25. Originally advanced, and with continuing support from the nation’s governors, and so far adopted by 46 states, the standards specify knowledge students should have attained at each grade level. The standards could thus naturally call for a national curriculum.

Dr. Carlson first discussed the expanding federal role in education. Important in this expansion is President Obama’s advocacy of “preschool for all,” which would begin schooling outside the home for children as young as four years old. This would expand on the Head Start program, which the Administration views as effective, and would, it is claimed, more than pay for itself through reduced spending on remedial programs, with claims of a 7 to 1 or 16 to 1 return on each dollar invested. Such claims, Carlson said, are based on a well-funded 1960s project, the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, involving intense intervention in the educational program of failing, economically distressed African American students, including 90 minute weekly home visits by professionals. Like Head Start, the project showed impressive early results, which then disappear when students enter the standard public school program. Carlson went on to note that “the social science evidence is actually and overwhelmingly clear” on what produces good educational outcomes, namely, life in a home headed by “two biological parents who are married … any and all deviations from this model predictably produce less favorable results, with sometimes high public costs.” He went on to quote Edward Ziegler of Yale University, who claimed that advocates of universal preschool ignore evidence that it “may be harmful” to the development of young children; “the conversations that young children have in their homes is commonly the most fruitful source of cognitive and language advance,” Carlson said. This parent-child interaction has been shown to produce superior performance to that of children schooled from before six years of age.

With respect to the Common Core Standards, Carlson said that he “shares the concerns” of many conservatives that the Common Core “smells suspicially like a national curriculum.” It will result in “more tests, more centralization, more experts … more money for a failing system.” What is needed in public education is a “radical de-consolidation” to move public educational systems to more resemble religious, private, and home education, in which parents have a major or exclusive influence. In particular, Carlson proposed the community college as a model for public primary and secondary education in its decentralized, comparatively unstructured nature, easily lending itself to parental and community control, accommodating family and other community schedules.

Maureen van den Berg then discussed the potential impact of Common Core Standards on private education. While presented as standards for public education, the Common Core will in fact impact religious, other private, and home education, Van den Berg said. “An increase in federal power in education equals a decrease of local control, for private, Christian schools, specifically this [the Common Core Standards] offers a threat to our autonomy and our religious liberty.” For Christian schools, autonomy and religious liberty are “the two key things that lends itself to the success that our schools have.” While originally advanced by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in 2008, the Common Core is developing into a federal standard. This is because federal education funding for states and exemption from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act is linked to the adoption of Common Core Standards, and thus private education, whether religious or not, will be under pressure to adopt the new national standard, with issues of accreditation ultimately coming on the table.

Other criticisms of the Common Core Standards is that they are in fact “mediocre” levels of attainment, and represent a “one size fits all standard.” Additionally, “it will be easily politicized by societal norms … no longer will it just stick to facts … special issue groups will make sure that their issue is covered.”

The autonomy and religious liberty of Christian schools will be specifically harmed because a national standard really requires a national curriculum and a national test, Van den Berg said. These will naturally follow from national acceptance of the Common Core. The SAT, GED, and ACT are now being aligned to the Common Core, and students at Christian schools must take these tests, thus pressuring these schools to teach in alignment with the Common Core Standard. If students from Christian schools do not do well on these tests, it in turn reflects poorly on the school. Thus the autonomy of Christian schools is affected, and also their religious liberty if they are pressured to teach what is contrary to their doctrine. Credit transfers, course and credit recognition, and college admissions may be tied to a school’s adherence to the Common Core.

While Common Core affects primary and secondary education, Van den Berg went on to discuss another threat posed by the growth of federal educational power to religious education, the new federal focus on early (pre-school) learning. The Obama Administration has pursued this in earnest during its second term, and it poses a challenge to religious preschools whether they receive government funding or not. This is occurring through the newly established Office of Early Learning, and its “Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge,” which includes money for states enacting preschool reforms that require that all preschools in states receiving funding be regulated by the state through a Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement System (TQRIS). The TQRIS requires states to regulate both curriculum and staffing of all preschools. Under pressure from the American Association of Christian Schools and other sources, the Department of Education granted an exemption to religious preschools where a religious exemption existed in state law, but not otherwise. Finally, the Administration’s Preschool for All program is attempting a federal incentive to states ‘to adopt voluntary, universal, high quality preschools.” It also involves standards in curriculum and staffing, and will be modeled on Race to the Top “but on a much larger scale.” In general, the Administration’s early learning program undermines private preschool autonomy and parents’ authority to direct the education of their children. Van den Berg noted that currently 80% of preschool age children are enrolled in preschools, and 80% of those are enrolled in private preschools. However, she said that where universal preschool programs have been enacted (currently Georgia and Oklahoma) “there has been a drastic decrease in the number of students attending private preschool programs.” Currently “this is a state battle” as “states have the option to pull out of both of these programs.”

Preserving the power of parents to determine and direct the education of their children is vital, Van den Berg said. Because of the increasingly apparent threat of much greater government control of early education, opposition to both the Common Core Standards and the early education program is growing.

In a question and answer session, it was noted that Florida has withdrawn from the Common Core and other states are considering it. It was also noted by Dr. Carlson that the “value neutral” claim of the Common Core Standards means that it has been stripped of any values associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition, while values arising from the sexual revolution are “snuck in.” Van den Berg also noted that federal money leads to a limitation of what Christian values can be taught.

The controversy over Common Core, while involving claims about academic achievement, is really a conflict about what values to teach children. Following presentations by Carlson and Van den Berg, Robert Morrison of the Family Research Council referred to the National History Standards of the 1990s, defeated by a vote of 99 to 1 in the U.S. Senate, which would have required every child in America to learn a highly revisionist history hostile to American civilization. He also noted that while homeschooling (and other private educational choices) is a check on the use of the schools for indoctrination by the state, under Common Core, “the government shapes the people.” Maintaining a free society which flows from values held by citizens rather than directed by the state makes it imperative that genuinely independent educational programs be preserved.