From the Editorial Board: The Politicization of the Common Core

It appears that the conservative wing of the Republican Party missed the neoliberal memo. The story is supposed to go as follows: The business community, driven by corporate interests and venture philanthropy, encourages the states to adopt a central set of academic standards for grades K-12, which claim to make all students “college and career ready”. Corporations sponsor state-level organizations such as the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officials (CCSSO) and persuade their members to pass these standards thus creating a new demand for curriculum and assessment materials in the oversaturated educational markets. These same businesses are strategically placed in markets for the development and sales of their products that are aligned to the new standards.

So far so good, as far as the history goes. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was heavily involved in the preparation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (Watt, 2011) and the sponsorship lists of both the NGA and the CCSSO read like a who’s-who of educational businesses. Among its “corporate fellows”, the NGA lists ACT, Educational Testing Service, The College Board, SAS, and Pearson Education. The CCSSO receives support from educational interests such as AdvanceEd, Blackboard, ETS, Microsoft, Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill Education, Renaissance Learning, Scantron and the School Improvement Network. These sponsorships were masked by the claim that the standards movement was driven by local, state-level forces. In 2010, forty-six states adopted the CCSS, which seemingly completed the neoliberal compact between the cupidity of business interests and the rhetoric of local control. It was the perfect arrangement, given the strong tradition in the United States of state and local control of education. Why then, we ask, are state legislatures in 2014 abandoning this state-level initiative that was backed by the business community with its crucial ability to provide political support?

The espoused reason is federal overreach. During the CCSS adoption process the Department of Education, characteristically, used monetary support as an inducement for state compliance. In 2009, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that $350 million would be pledged under Race to the Top to support assessments linked to the CCSS Initiative and tied Race to the Top funds to the adoption of “college and career ready” standards. Representative Glenn Thompson, smelling a rat, noted during a House committee meeting: “The only common multistate academic standards that I am aware of are those being developed through the common core initiative; therefore, it stands to reason that any State wishing to receive funding through the Race to the Top program will be mandated to adopt the Common Core and to test its students based on those standards” (Hearing before the Committee on Education and Labor, 2010). So, the feds were on board with the state-driven plan that was covertly pushed by the country’s business interests. The neoliberal trifecta! Yet, with changes to the political landscape after the 2010 and 2012 elections, some states began to challenge the aims of the CCSS, suspecting that they evidenced a federal usurpation of educational policy. By the year 2014, Congressman Thompson’s words were echoed in a number of State Houses and on the campaign trail.

Consider the following: On July 22, 2014, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed NC Senate Bill 812 into law. The title of the bill is instructive: “An Act to Exercise North Carolina’s Constitutional Authority over All Academic Standards; To Replace Common Core; And to Ensure that Standards are Robust and Appropriate and Enable Students to Succeed Academically and Professionally” (General Assembly Sessions Law, 2014–78). Not exactly a repeal, the bill calls for the establishment of a commission to review the CCSS and to then make recommendations for changes that will “increase students’ level of academic achievement” (Section 2 (c)) beyond what, presumably, is attainable through the CCSS.

North Carolina has prided itself on being at the forefront of educational reform, winning “one of only twelve Race to the Top (RttT) competitive grants in 2010, bringing nearly $400 million to the state’s public school system” (Public Schools of North...