Published July 19, 2010
Last week, when Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester said Massachusetts would sign on to national education standards, many educators said, Wait — we have the best test scores in the country! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Or rather, if it ain’t as broke as everywhere else in the United States, don’t fix it.
The Boston-based nonprofit Pioneer Institute has just released Part 1 of a report finding deep flaws in those national standards, called Common Core. The report says Massachusetts should preserve its standards for English and the language arts — or risk lowering the bar for students. You might have read about it in the Herald this weekend:
On Wednesday, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will vote on the standards, which could require schools to buy new books, teachers to learn new curriculum and MCAS tests to be rewritten — gutting the state’s multibillion-dollar 1990s education reform, critics say.
It’s the focus of today’s talker on Radio Boston. Chester was on the program earlier this month in the lead-up to his decision.
Indeed, Massachusetts is a state to watch. A Washington Post article two weeks ago called the Bay State’s standards “highly regarded.”