Last November, Arne Duncan complained that the “white, suburban moms” were resisting the implementation of the Common Core.  From the Washington Post,

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

Last night, I went to a debate about the Common Core held at the local library run by the League of Women Voters. My town is Ground Zero for “white, suburban moms,”  so I went to the debate to get a better understanding about why there has been so much push back from this group.

When I arrived, the parking lot at the library was already full. I had to park at the supermarket across the street. The auditorium completed packed with “white, suburban moms,” local officials, and grey haired Women Voter members. The mayor and the fire chief had to tell some people to leave. They opened outside doors, so people could stand in the garden area to hear the talk. I lucked into a seat in the second row. Someone shouted from the back of the room that this meeting should have been held in a larger auditorium. The League of Women voters speaker shrugged from the podium. “We didn’t know that so many people would be here.”

On the stage were six speakers. On the pro side was the head of the state’s school board association, the state’s school administrators association, and a head of the state board of education. On the con side was a school principal from NYC, an education policy expert, and a professor from an education school.

The pro people said that standards were needed. These tests weren’t that much different from other standardized tests that the kids were already taking. They offered the ability to show that NJ was definitely doing better than other states with weaker standardized tests, like Georgia.

The con people were all over the board. The principal thought the tests were too hard and that teachers and principals would be held responsible for unrealistic expectations. The education policy expert said that the tests were too easy and that the math PhDs should have been enlisted to write the questions. The ed school prof said that these tests weren’t preparing kids for critical thinking, and there probably shouldn’t be any standardized tests at all. (He had DATA to prove it.)

It was clear from the mood of the crowd — their claps and groans — it was not a Common Core happy group. From their questions, they had typical concerns about standardized tests, ie kids with special needs, privacy of results, the amount of time taking the tests, and teaching to the test. But we’ve had standardized tests in schools for years. The new Common Core tests aren’t going to be that different from the past. What’s different?

Teachers are more concerned about the Common Core tests than previous standardized tests, because these tests will cause a bigger shift in curriculum. It’s always a pain to change your curriculum. They’re also worried about accountability issues. However, I am not exactly sure how the Common Core is any different from previous standardized tests. We’ve been able to measure the difference between schools within a state for a long time. I’m not sure if there are sticks and carrots attached to the Common Core test results. Teachers have been vocally protesting the Common Core for the past year, and these protests have trickled down to the parents.

The State Education person said that one of the benefits of the Common Core is that we will know for sure that kids in New Jersey are performing much, much better than the kids from Georgia and how they compare to kids in Finland. From a social scientist perspective, that is useful and interesting data, but the parents in our school district don’t really care about those comparisons. They just want to get their kid into Harvard.

Kids in this town already score in the 90th percentile on state standardized tests. They ace the SATs. 90 percent or more go to four-year colleges. Together, the schools, parents, and the community make sure that kids get a good education. Nobody on the panel on either side of the debate could explain how the Common Core would help or hurt the kids in this town.

Who benefits from the Common Core?

1) State officials and political leaders in the winning states. The NJ governor will have bragging rights over the GA governor.

2) Maybe kids in mediocre school districts. The lowest performing school districts have problems too deep for any quick fixes like this. The highest performing districts don’t need this fix. Maybe kids in the middle will benefit from higher expectations.

3) The people who write and administer these tests.

4) Maybe mediocre students in good school districts. This group is always forgotten about.

5) Social scientists. Data is fun.

Tangentially, a number of people on the panel couldn’t agree on what skills that kids were going to need in the future. One or two said that kids didn’t need to memorize information anymore. They didn’t need to know the state capitals or the names of the presidents, because wikipedia exists. So, it was more important to teach kids how to critique information.