A Common Core
Published July 18, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, July 18, 2014.
North Carolina’s replacement of Common Core may boil down to the question: What’s in a name?
The movement led by some Republicans to withdraw North Carolina from the national academic standards was prompted by an irrational fear of a “federal takeover” of education.
Common Core was no such thing. Initiated by the bipartisan National Governors Association, the movement recognized a need for all American students to follow similar academic guidelines. When it was embraced by the Obama administration, however, opposition intensified.
Yet, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory supported Common Core. So did the N.C. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. They recognized the necessity of aligning North Carolina curricula with those used in other states.
Partisan politics and distrust of President Obama won out. The legislature Wednesday approved a bill that will replace Common Core with yet-to-be-written North Carolina standards. McCrory will sign it. But he knows its secret: At its core, there may not be much difference.
Despite use of Tea Party-type rhetoric in the bill, the end result could be something that closely resembles Common Core — which apparently would be OK as long as it’s not called that.
The bill declares “the independence of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and related student assessments in the State, rejecting usurpation and intrusion from federally mandated national or standardized controls.” It adds that nothing in the law “shall prohibit benchmarking the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and related student assessments with those of other states or nations in order to allow comparison ... with those of other states and nations.”
So the standards must be independent of but may be “benchmarked” to those of other states or even other countries. That’s good. North Carolina education should not stand in isolation from the rest of the country or the world. Yet the bill persists in making references to “the needs of North Carolina’s citizens,” as if our students need to learn different math and language skills.
The bill prohibits the state from making agreements with the federal government or a private agency that limit state control over academic standards, but it allows exceptions for International Baccalaureate, Advancement Placement and similar programs. The exceptions recognize the value of wider academic collaboration — which Common Core critics seem to fear.
The bill also says high school studies should be aligned to meet the minimum requirements for admission to UNC institutions. Those requirements, of course, will be similar to the standards set by universities in other states. If North Carolina students are going to compete equally with students from other states for seats in our own universities, or in universities in other states, North Carolina standards must be just as demanding.
The bill creates an Academic Standards Review Commission made up mostly of people appointed by the legislature. It will propose standards and report to the State Board of Education and the legislature. If it wants to work efficiently, this commission can rely on the existing national standards that will measure North Carolina students against their peers across the country.
North Carolina can call these standards whatever it wants as long as our students keep up.
