Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
declares: ‘Common Core is dead’, by Kate Scanlon, 1/18/18, the Blaze
Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos said earlier this week that Common Core — a controversial set of
federal education standards — “is dead” at her department.
What
did DeVos say? During
a conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday about
“lessons learned” about school reform during the George W. Bush and Barack
Obama administrations, DeVos said that, despite “valiant efforts to improve
education” from both parties, “federal education reform efforts have not worked
as hoped.”
“That’s not a point I make
lightly or joyfully,” she said. “Yes, there have been some minor improvements
in a few areas. But we’re far from where we need to be.”
DeVos said she didn’t want
to “impugn anyone’s motives” but asked, “Why, after all the good intentions,
the worthwhile goals, the wealth of expertise mustered, and the billions and
billions of dollars spent, are students still unprepared?”
She criticized both No
Child Left Behind and Common Core as ineffective at combating problems in
American education, noting that the former “did little to spark higher scores.”
DeVos said the Obama
administration then “dangled billions of dollars through the ‘Race to the Top’
competition, and the grant-making process not so subtly encouraged states to
adopt the Common Core State Standards.”
“With a price tag of
nearly $4.5 billion, it was billed as the ‘largest-ever federal investment in
school reform,’” she said, adding that “nearly every state accepted Common Core
standards and applied for hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘Race to the Top’
funds.” DeVos noted there was “public backlash to federally imposed tests and
the Common Core.”
“I agree — and have
always agreed — with President Trump on this: ‘Common Core is a
disaster,’” she said. “And at the U.S. Department of Education, Common Core is
dead.”
She argued that “two
presidents from different political parties and philosophies” took “two
different approaches” but both left America’s students “unprepared.”
“Perhaps the lesson lies
not in what made the approaches different, but in what made them the same: the
federal government,” she said. “Both approaches had the same Washington
‘experts’ telling educators how to behave.”
DeVos argued the results
of the two programs show “federal action has its limits.”
“Ideally, parent and
teacher work together to help a child discover his or her potential and pursue
his or her passions,” she said:
When we seek to empower
teachers, we must empower parents as well. Parents are too often powerless in
deciding what’s best for their child. The state mandates where to send their
child. It mandates what their child learns and how he or she learns it. In the
same way, educators are constrained by state mandates. District mandates.
Building mandates… all kinds of other mandates! Educators don’t need Washington
mandating their teaching on top of everything else.
DeVos offered few
specifics about a plan for education reform, but emphasized she wants a more
state-centered approach with more “parental empowerment.”
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