blog : Thoughts on Romney’s “No Support Position” On Common Core State Standards

09/26/2012

Romney In Education Week blogger, Allison Klein’s post today, she reported that presidential candidate Mitt Romney does not believe that the federal government should support the implementation of Common Core State Standards. He states that it is the responsibility of individual states to allocate funding for the implementation of these standards. In theory this seems like a fine approach, however experience has taught me that this oftentimes does not happen.

As the daughter of a Chicago public school teacher for over 40 years and the fact that I taught in the inner-city for a decade in the same city, experience has taught me a contrary point to Romney’s position. In Illinois for example, which is at the bottom of 50 states for contribution to education, schools are funded largely through property taxes. So here's what happens: public schools, both rural and urban, who serve large populations of children in poverty, do not have the same kind of access to funding as in the wealthy suburbs that surround the Chicago metropolitan area. As an educator for over 25 years I visit dozens of schools each year in the Chicago area as well as nationally. I see firsthand the consequences of this kind of thinking. Schools that do not have access to adequate funding from local taxes or state taxes have facilities that cannot prepare our students for career and college readiness in the 21st century. I've been in plenty of schools where there isn't even a Wi-Fi connection.

Historically, the federal government has been a leader in righting the social injustices and inequities. The civil rights movement, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the rights of women and children could not be championed by individual states - it instead takes the cohesive structure of the federal government to provide focus and expectations (not to mention legal consequences) to begin to right these injustices.

Presidential candidate Romney's expressed position on Common Core State Standards is another example to me of how politicians are completely vexed by the complexities of what we do as educators. The Common Core State Standards are not a perfect system, by any means. Yet they do begin a discussion of what it means for students to be career and college ready. The focus on goals rather than content is refreshing and has the potential to create the thinkers that we need in our nation for the 21st century. If Gov. Romney ever asked me why I think the Common Core State Standards should be supported, both financially and otherwise, I would argue that if it is his position to improve education for all children then the federal government must lead this charge. When the federal government takes a position on a social issue like equal rights, civil rights, and equity historically, we see significant change.

Politicians continue to use public education as an election issue. Yet these leaders do not send their children to public schools and many of them never attended public schools themselves. Instead they send their children to expensive schools where the class sizes are smaller, there's always a Wi-Fi connection, and the students receive opportunities that children in underfunded schools will never see. How will we ever be able to write this inequity when our public schools are so maligned, neglected, and abused? It is time for politicians who are dictating the national discourse on education to realize the complexity of public schools and the very needed support by the federal government to encourage the kinds of reforms (that are not exclusively based on standardized test scores) that we need.



Subscribe!