#78. The Total Failure of Common Core State Standards

Common Core has not only caused untold suffering for students, but has failed in its primary mission, to improve scores on academic tests.

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Dear friends,

Over the years between 2010 and 2013, the great majority of U.S. states signed on to the Common Core State Standards, and the remaining states signed on to comparable standards, as a way of complying with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, or what was subsequently revised somewhat and renamed Every Child Succeeds.

It would be hard to overstate the harm that has been created by this federally mandated change in how U.S. public schools operate. Common Core stripped teachers of freedom to vary the school curricula to meet student needs, placed way too much weight on standardized tests, removed the more enjoyable parts of the school curriculum in favor of more drill for tests, greatly increased the pressure and decreased the pleasure of schooling at all grade levels, and appears to be the primary cause of the large increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teenagers between 2012 and now. For my accounts of these effects, with references, see Letters D5, D8, #39, #50, and #51.

The clear purpose of Common Core was to improve students’ scores on academic tests, especially in reading (or what is sometimes labeled language arts) and math. All those changes, all that misery imposed, was for one central purpose—to increase students’ scores on tests of reading and math. Politicians and pundits who rarely if ever see actual students in classrooms and are only concerned about scores on standardized academic tests, wanted to raise those scores.

What has been the effect of Common Core on test scores?

So, the question occurred to me: What has been the effect of Common Core on test scores? I’ve looked into that. Here is the sad but I think completely predictable answer. Common Core has totally and miserably failed to achieve what it was designed to achieve.

U.S. students’ academic knowledge and skills are periodically assessed by two sets of academic tests. One set, unique to the United States, is the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests, administered every two years to demographically balanced samples of 4^th and 8^th graders. The other is the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), administered every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to demographically balanced samples of 15-year-olds in many countries throughout the world, including the U.S. Both sets include tests of mathematics and reading that are similar to the mathematics and reading tests typically employed in Common Core. What happened to scores on these tests over the years from the beginning of Common Core up to the last test before the COVID pandemic disrupted schooling? Here are the dismal findings:

The NAEP scores for both math and reading increased gradually, for both 8^th graders and 4^th graders from 1990 up until 2013, which was when Common Core practices were at least partially implemented in nearly all states. Then, between 2013 and 2019, all these scores declined. The reductions were small, ranging from 1 to 5 points on a scale in which mean scores on all tests were in the 200s (NAAP, 2024). Between 2019 and 2024, as Common Core continued, scores on these tests continued to decline, with additional drops between 5 and 8 points depending on the test. The remarkable conclusion is this: Despite so much extra focus on reading and math over an 11-year period, reading and math scores did not increase.

The findings for PISA scores were no more encouraging. Between 2009 and 2018 (the last PISA before COVID), the U.S. reading score increased a meager 5 points, from 500 to 505; and the U.S. math score declined by 9 points, from 487 to 478, and both scores declined a few points further between 2018 and 2021 (OECD, 2023).

Beyond these scores, several research studies have attempted to determine if states that instituted the greatest increases in the math and reading standards showed improvements in tests on those subjects relative to states where Common Core resulted in fewer changes in standards (Loveless, 2020; Song, 2022). Again, the results have been consistently negative. One researcher (Loveless, 2020), on reviewing such studies, wrote:

“In short, the evidence suggests student achievement is, at best, about where it would have been if Common Core had never been adopted, if the billions of dollars spent on implementation had never been spent, if the countless hours of professional development inducing teachers to retool their lessons had never been imposed. When will time be up on the Common Core experiment? How many more years must pass, how much more should Americans spend, and how many more effective curricula must be pushed aside before leaders conclude that Common Core has failed?”

Why the failure should have been predictable

Why has Common Core failed even to increase scores in the subject areas of its primary focus? The answer, I think, is rather obvious, though some will say it is obvious only in retrospect. The attempt to force learning by increased drill and pressure does not work. It especially does not work when the tests assess understanding rather than rote memory, which is largely the case for the NAEP and PISA tests. Children learn when they are engaged and interested, when they want to learn, and engagement in the classroom cannot be legislated or coerced; it never results from drill. When engagement occurs, it results from the intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity of teachers who feel empowered to innovate, which power was stripped away by state mandates. Moreover, depriving kids of recess, adequate time for lunch, and some of the more enjoyable courses and assignments of traditional schooling for the sake of more study does nothing to improve math and reading scores. It just burns kids out and turns them off to school.

In a devastating critique of Common Core, Thomas Armstrong (2018) listed and described 12 reasons why the program has failed and will continue to fail if not abandoned. Here are a few of them:

• It homogenizes learning, creating a one-size-fits-all approach.

• It encourages the fragmentation of the learning process. Children learn best via “wholes,” not parts.

• It encourages teachers to teach to the test.

• It puts pressure on teachers to teach in developmentally inappropriate ways, especially during the early years.

• It discriminates against students in low socio-economic areas of the country.

• Very few experienced teachers who’ve taught in the trenches were consulted in establishing the standards.

• It encourages a bureaucratic attitude toward learning and teaching.

It is high time for the federal government to repeal all federal mandates regarding school curricula and how teachers are assessed, and for all states to repeal the programs resulting from those mandates. When schooling succeeds, it succeeds because enlightened teachers, who care about students as people, not as numbers, know how to respond to students’ individual natures in ways that provoke their curiosity, engage them intellectually, lighten the mood, makes them feel valued, and bring some playfulness into the classroom. When teachers are not free to respect and adapt to the real needs and interests of kids, kids suffer, and the best teachers quit.

Further thoughts

As readers of my book Free to Learn know, I’ve never been a fan of our coercive schooling system. But the system wasn’t as bad when teachers—who usually are people who genuinely care about kids—had more autonomy and could bring some freedom and joy to kids in the confines of the classroom. School has always been prison, but before Common Core it was for most students a less damaging prison.

And now, what are your thoughts and questions regarding Common Core and its effects, or your views about how public schooling might be reformed positively? This substack is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your questions, stories, and experiences add to its value for everyone and are treated with respect, by me and other readers, regardless of whether we agree or disagree.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Armstrong, T. (2018). 12 reasons common core falls short. American Institute for Learning and Human Development. Online at https://www.institute4learning.com/2018/04/26/12-reasons-the-common-core-is-bad-for-americas-schools/

Loveless, T. (2020). Common core has not worked. Educationnext.org Jan. 14, 2020.

NAEP (2024). NAEP data explorer. Online at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/landing.

OECD (2023). PISA 2022 results (volume I and II)—country notes: United States. Online at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2022-results-volume-i-and-ii-country-notes_ed6fbcc5-en/united-states_a78ba65a-en.html

Song, M., Garet, M. S., Yang, R., & Atchison, D. (2022). Did states’ adoption of more rigorous standards lead to improved student achievement? evidence from a comparative interrupted time series study of standards-based reform. American Educational Research Journal, 59, 610–647.