Thompson Statement: Hearing on Improving Our Competitiveness: Common Core Education Standards
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
December 8, 2009
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Alexa Marrero or Ryan Murphy
((202) 225-4527)
We’re here today to take a closer look at the Common Core State Standards Initiative and how coordinated efforts to strengthen academic standards can enhance American competitiveness.
The Common Core Initiative is being developed through the joint leadership of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The goal of the initiative is to provide a voluntary, research and evidence-based set of standards for mathematics and English-language arts. I want to emphasize the word “voluntary” in that description. While the Common Core is still under development, I don’t believe anyone involved in the initiative intended for it to become the one and only set of academic standards in the United States. For that reason, I’d like to focus my remarks this morning not on the quality of the standards themselves, but on what the federal government is doing with those standards. Secretary Duncan has not been shy about his intentions to dramatically reshape education through the Race to the Top fund. And one key component of the Race to the Top guidelines is the requirement that states participate in and adopt a set of common academic standards. The Department has even gone one step further, offering to provide funding to help states develop assessments based on those common standards. The only common, multi-state academic standards I am aware of are those being developed through the Common Core Initiative. Therefore, it stands to reason that any state wishing to receive funding through the Race to the Top program will be mandated to adopt the Common Core – and to test its students based on those standards. In other words, the Common Core is being transformed from a voluntary, state-based initiative to a set of federal academic standards with corresponding federal tests.
I know that I can speak for the committee when I say that we applaud the Secretary’s enthusiasm when it comes to education reform. # # # |