Important and compelling report from Fordham comparing our current ramshackle collection of state standards to the Common Core State Standards. The essential question: Would replacing any given state’s math and ELA standards with CCSS be a step forward, back or no difference? The upshot, per Fordham’s Education Gadfly:
Common Core State Standards Initiative are clearer and more rigorous than today’s ELA standards in 37 states and today’s math standards in 39 states….In 33 of those states, the Common Core bests both ELA and math standards. Yet California, Indiana and the District of Columbia have ELA standards that are clearly superior to those of the Common Core. And nearly a dozen states have ELA or math standards in the same league as Common Core.
At Fordham’s Flypaper blog, Mike Petrilli sensibly points out the states that have already adopted the Common Core are moving from “clearly inferior” standards to something much better. “As a result, the national average for state standards has already gone from a “C” for both math and English (pre-Common Core adoption) to a B-plus for math and a B for English, now that these states have switched standards. In just the last month or so, America has raised the bar by at least a letter grade, from mediocre to very good standards,” he writes.