Wendy Howard: Higher standards will mean our next generation is better prepared for college or the workforce. That’s good for kids, parents, taxpayers and our country.
Editor’s note: Wendy Howard is executive director of Florida Alliance for Choices in Education, a group that includes a wide range of school choice organizations, including Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog. A shorter version of this post ran this week as a letter to the editor in the Tampa Bay Times. Given Wendy’s conservative political bent, her staunch support for school choice and the concerns about Common Core, we thought it worthwhile to share a fuller version.
With attacks on the Common Core State Standards for education coming from both sides of the aisle, what are parents to think?
I’ve heard Common Core is Obama’s agenda to indoctrinate our children. I’ve heard it’s an unconstitutional federal takeover. I’ve even heard it’s a scheme to perform experiments nationwide on our next generation. After doing some research, I learned none of those concerns hold water. The bickering continues, however, while our children suffer the consequences.
The fact is, our kids need higher standards for education. Let’s look at a couple of disconcerting facts from the perspective of a parent with two children attending a public charter school.
Forty percent of Florida’s class of 2013 who took the ACT college entrance exam were graded “not college ready” in any subject, which is higher than the national average of 31 percent. As a parent, this has huge financial implications. If my children are part of these statistics, I will have to pay for remedial classes in college, something I simply cannot afford. As a taxpayer, I expect my child’s diploma to mean she actually succeeded in high school and can move right into college courses. As a nation, millions of kids and their parents are impacted each year when that turns out not to be the case.
Higher standards will mean our next generation is better prepared for college or the workforce. That’s good for kids, parents, taxpayers and our country.
Here’s another troubling statistic: Thirty percent of high school graduates can’t pass the U.S. military entrance exam, which is only focused on basic reading and math skills. At what point does the lack of high standards become a national security issue? If the learning gap between the U.S. and other countries continues to rise, which country becomes the next super power? What does our country look like in 20, 40, 60 years? I guess that depends on whether we look at the achievement gap between the U.S. and other countries as a crisis – or another issue we kick down the road. (more…)
by Senator John Legg
Education policy must now, and always, be state-driven and implemented at the local level. Washington bureaucrats will never know what is best for each individual state and should not assert to know as such. As conservatives, we must stand firm against the dangers of nationalization of school curriculum and be ever vigilant to not allow infringement on our 10th Amendment rights.
Sen. John Legg
The Common Core State Standards are built upon strengths of current state standards but are internationally benchmarked, preparing all students to succeed in our global economy and society. Our framers, in their brilliance, allowed for this independence and collaboration through the 10th Amendment, which has produced results that are unparalleled. America’s prosperity is heavily dependent upon states learning from one another other and challenging each other to improve through competition, comparison, and collaboration.
There is little debate that our education standards nationwide have been stagnant. According to the report, The Learning Curve, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the United States ranks 17th out of 40 countries in overall educational performance. Common Core State Standards present a path by which states can improve this ranking by setting rigorous, measurable standards based on 50 separate laboratories of learning that design their own curriculum and decide on implementation and assessments at the state and local levels, not the national level.
The movement to Common Core asserts higher-order thinking across disciplines and concepts, which will yield a higher quality of comprehension for students, ensuring they are prepared for college, the workforce or to become a business owner/job creator. Common Core is a set of academic standards and does not pose an identity or security risk to students.
Florida, as an education reform leader, has adopted its own rigorous standards beyond the minimum Common Core State Standards, and local districts have the authority to increase expectations for their students even further. Our students deserve the best and if Common Core provides foundational standards for our students without 10th Amendment infringements, conservatives such as I, could not be more supportive.
Maybe Washington could learn from Common Core implementation regarding other areas of government by providing reasonable standards, then getting out of the way and letting states do what they do best. This is indeed what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
John Legg is a Republican senator from Pasco County, Fla., and the current chairman of the Florida Senate K-20 Education Policy Committee. He is also a certified teacher with more than 10 years of classroom experience and a charter school administrator.
