Opinion: Mike Pence and Backing Out of the Common Core Standards

5.3.3 -Contrast the actions, motives (e.g., loyalty, selfishness, conscientiousness), and appear­ances of characters in a work of fiction and discuss the importance of the contrasts to the plot or theme.

And here is old Indiana’s standard (2006):

5.3.3 – Contrast the actions, motives, and appearances of characters in a work of fiction and discuss the importance of the contrasts to the plot or theme.

See what they did there? They took out those pesky parenthesis! See, in 2006 Indiana straight up copied the standards that California Developed.  They even hired the same testing company (ETS), so I bet they had very similar standardized tests.

The old standards were top-of-the-line standards. One study found that California, Indiana and Massachusetts had the most rigorous standards in the country, while rating the average state standards at C-minus. Why did they do this? No Child Left Behind implemented a testing regime. If you had to test your kids, one way to make yourself look better was to have less rigorous standards, and inflate your scores. Many states ended up looking like all stars, even thought their tests lacked rigor.

So what to do about this?  Several experts got together and developed the Common Core. That way, everyone would be held to the same standards.

Now here is where I am going to say something controversial. Common Core was not much of a change for California, because it already had extremely rigorous standards. Nor was it a major change for Indiana or Massachusetts, because all of our standards were rigorous. It was a MASSIVE change for places like Wyoming, Montana, Wisconsin, and Hawaii whose standards were weak (see page 17).

So here is why Mike Pence’s position is on Common Core is so complicated – He opted his state out of Common Core, which was bringing the rest of the country up to his state’s rigorous standards. Then his administration replaced the standards with lower level standards. Here is my favorite example. Remember that standard from above? Well, now in the new 2014 Indiana Standards, it looks like this:

5.RL.2.3: Describe two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or play, drawing on specific details in the text, and how they impact the plot.

See what they did there? They changed the words “contrast” to “describe”. Indiana even admits this: “IAS 2014 shifts the expectation by requiring students to describe instead of compare and contrast.” Any teacher who knows Depth of Knowledge or Blooms Taxonomy will tell you, that is a much lower level skill. And while some of Indiana’s standards increase rigor, others decrease rigor, and it is a complete muddled mess comparing them to Common Core standards.

That that is the real problem that this creates: Now that Indiana is on a different set of standards than the rest of the Common Core states, we cannot tell with ease if their students are outperforming or underperforming students in other states. If they do poorer on tests, Indiana can just say “our standards are more rigorous”, and if they do better on tests, Indiana can say “it’s because our standards are better than the common core”. But you cannot know for certain – it is comparing apples and oranges.  Common Core was designed so that we can compare students across state lines, and Pence’s actions eliminate that ability.

Common Core is tough for a lot of states – but it shouldn’t have been tough for Indiana. They should have easily slid on in to them. So when Mike Pence goes up on stage at the RNC this week, and rails against Common Core, just remember – he may sound like a champion of education reform, but he is really a champion of education regression.