What a contrast with the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Although adopting national “Common Core” K-12 mathematics and English language arts (ELA) standards will have far-reaching implications for every public school and college in the state, minutes of the past year’s meetings attest that most of the highly credentialed board members who voted in July to adopt them were utterly indifferent to the academic and financial implications of their votes.

A state education board is analogous to a local school committee. Members oversee the professionals in the agency. Professionals propose; citizen boards dispose. At the very least, the boards are expected to safeguard the public interest by asking tough questions about important issues.

However, it isn’t clear that any of those voting on July 21 actually read the final version of Common Core’s standards. The record doesn’t reveal one searching question asked by the members who approved them, despite the wealth of material they received on Common Core’s standards. What can be done to remedy an ask-no-important-questions BESE?

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