Friday, March 26, 2010

What Happened to the American Diploma Project?

Me, June 2009:

In case you're wondering what our new national standards for math and English will look like, the best guess is the American Diploma Project Benchmarks. Either that or whatever comes out of Arne Duncan's ass.

Turns out I was wrong -- what we've got is whatever came out of ACT and the College Board's ass. Based on the actual content of the English standards, Achieve, the ostensible third leg on this stool, has been muscled aside by the testing companies as much as everyone else. By all rights, the Common Core standards should have been 90% done before they started, since there was very broad consensus already in place behind the complete, mature American Diploma Project (ADP), whose goals and supporters are essentially the same as Common Core's. Why wasn't ADP the draft #1 of Common Core? What happened? I'd love to know how the internal politics played out.

I'm not crazy about ADP, but at least it is clear, well organized, and well aligned with existing high quality standards already used in the US. It is a vastly better choice than the current draft of the Common Core in English.

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