Friday, January 09, 2015

Common Core Carrot

One fundamental problem with Obama-era reform is the premise that one should not be eligible to receive a high school diploma until one proves he or she is ready for college. That was never the presumption before. You would not ask a student who barely squeaked out of high school with a C- GPA and the minimum number of credits where they were going to college, as if they had just punched their ticket to higher education.

On the other hand, I think the Common Core ELA/Literacy standards are decent at determining if a student possesses college level "literacy," that is, as such things go. It seems to me to be a decent template for a new SAT, but woefully inadequate as the basis of a K-12 curriculum.

Having said that, it makes way more sense to say "OK, if you pass this Common Core test you can go to community college for free," than it does to say "You must pass this college-readiness test to graduate from high school at all.

So... we'll see if the Common Core becomes part of the debate on the issue.

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