Education

Common Core gets AWFUL review in new study

Robby Soave Reporter
Font Size:

Bad news for supporters of national education curriculum: States with education standards most closely aligned to Common Core fared worse on math tests than states with their own standards, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by the Brookings Institution, compared standardized test scores for all 50 states over the last five years. It found that states using education standards that are most dissimilar to Common Core tended to score the highest on math.

Though the difference is small, it nevertheless undermines the claims of Common Core’s high profile backers, which include President Obama’s Department of Education, several moderate Republican governors, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Supporters of Common Core argue that strong, effective standards will sweep away such skepticism by producing lasting, significant gains in student learning,” wrote the study’s authors. “So far at least–and it is admittedly the early innings of a long ball game–there are no signs of such an impressive accomplishment.”

States that followed a hybrid approach to standards — utilizing some aspects of the Common Core and some aspects of their own standards — fared worse than both full-Common Core states and non-Common Core states.

Common Core is an increasingly divisive issue. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Republican governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Florida’s Jeb Bush vigorously support its implementation. The Gates Foundation has poured millions of dollars into efforts to promote the standards. Thanks to heavy establishment support, the standards are currently being implemented in most of America’s 50 states.

Grassroots conservatives — and even teachers unions, who oppose the standardized testing component — are pushing back, however, and full implementation is threatened in at least a few states.

Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, noted that Brookings isn’t typically known for publishing arch conservative opinions.

“This study, from the hardly Tea Party aligned Brookings Institution, is another nail in the coffin of the over-hyped promises of many Core advocates,” he told The Daily Caller.

The study provides useful evidence than Common Core in theory and Common Core in practice are two very different things, said McCluskey.

“It’s increasingly clear that even if the Core is a significant uptick in rigor over previous standards in many states–a contested ‘if’–translating that into improved academic performance is very difficult,” he said. (RELATED: EPIC FAIL: Parents reveal insane Common Core problems)

Joy Pullman, a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, said that the Brookings study might not be quite so damning, but only because its research was based on a wildly flawed pro-Common Core study.

“The authors [of the original study] basically played with their data to push their conclusion that Common-Core lookalike states had higher performance,” she told TheDC. “So this new study bases its analysis on the old study’s rating scale, which itself is flawed.”

In either case, there’s little solid data to suggest that Common Core-aligned states perform better on math. Pullman pointed to a portion of the Brookings analysis that predicted Common Core would make no difference in students’ math performances for a least a quarter century.

“What a horrific condemnation of the piles of mandates, taxpayer money, teacher time, and disruption to students Common Core has caused,” she said. “All that — so far for nothing, and with no signs of any positive return in sight.” (RELATED: Is this the worst Common Core math problem in human history?)

It is a shame that Common Core implementation is so widespread, given the lack of evidence to support it, said McCluskey.

“What’s most unfortunate is that, thanks to federal coercion encouraged by Core supporters, we weren’t able to look at evidence like this before almost every state in the nation was pushed into adopting the Core,” he said.

The Obama administration incentivized adoption of the standards by tying implementation to federal grants — something that vexed even supporters of the standards, such as the Fordham Institute’s Michael Brickman. (RELATED: Here is the conservative defense of Common Core)

U.S. Senate Republicans have recently proposed a resolution instructing Obama to stop coercing states into Common Core implementation. (RELATED: Senate Republicans: No More Common Core ‘coercion’)

Follow Robby on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel