If you wanted to dream up an example of the ill consequence of ?one size fits all? federal policy, you'd be hard pressed to do better than Arne Duncan and company's treatment of Massachusetts right now. Here's a state that boasts the highest academic standards in the country?standards that helped it soar above all of its peers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and make historic gains for low-income and minority children over the past decade. Yet to position itself to win ?Race to the Top? (!) funds, it has to promise, by the June 1 application deadline, to adopt ?common core? standards this summer that won't be public until June 2?standards that some respectable observers believe will be lower than what it has now. This is insanity!
Secretary Duncan and Race to the Top head-honcho Joanne Weiss: Please find an escape route for Massachusetts's Mitch Chester. You've put him in the impossible situation of having to sign up for national standards that are still in flux while promising that he won't lower the Bay State bar. He can't with a straight face do that today. You shouldn't ask him (or, for that matter, anybody) to buy a pig in a poke. You should follow the advice of Democrats for Education reform, which wrote weeks ago,
Massachusetts is widely recognized as having among the highest standards of any of the 50 states. We think the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) should reconsider such a strict timeline for the adoption of CCSI, especially for a state like Massachusetts that could wind up adopting a set of standards that are lower than the ones it currently has in place if pushed too early to join CCSI. It is particularly unreasonable that the RTTT guidelines would force states to adopt CCSI standards before they are fully developed.
At the very least, make it clear that if a state learns that its own standards are superior to the Common Core, it can rescind its promise to adopt them. In other words, say you won't dock Massachusetts for having second thoughts if it becomes clear that its own standards are still the best in the land.
Before the Race to the Top, Massachusetts already was at the top. Don't be the force that pushes the City on a Hill down the hill.
?Mike Petrilli
