Robert Holland: Obama is bribing states to accept national curriculum

1.22.10 - Alongside the attempted federalization of health care in Washington, with details being hashed out behind closed doors, a parallel bid to nationalize K-12 education is going forward more subtly but just as surely.

Robert Holland: Obama is bribing states to accept national curriculum

Alongside the attempted federalization of health care in Washington, with details being hashed out behind closed doors, a parallel bid to nationalize K-12 education is going forward more subtly but just as surely.

“Sight unseen” is the mode of operation in both cases.

Members of Congress have had to vote on complex health-care-overhaul details they have not studied and sometimes not even seen. Similarly, states seeking to win juicy shares of the $4.35 billion in one-time education grants dangled before them by the Obama administration must agree to adopt a set of national education standards and a national test.

State and local school systems had until this past Tuesday to have their so-called Race to the Top (RttT) applications filed with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. His office has stated clearly, in writing, that states will have no real shot at this slush fund unless they have agreed to adopt “common standards” and “common assessments.”

The consortium of Big Education interests behind the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) released a first draft of national “college and career readiness” standards last fall, but its grade-by-grade K-12 standards for language arts and math either have not been completed or are not available for public inspection. Texas and Alaska are the only two states that have declined to hop aboard this Race over the Cliff.

Meanwhile, the common assessment — a national test — is currently just something Duncan vows to purchase with a spare $350 million from his federal stimulus stash, employing yet another handpicked consortium to write the test for all American children.

In short, states must accept the national standards and national test — essentially a national curriculum — sight unseen if they want the federal largess.

In doing so, they would be largely junking their own standards and assessments, for which their taxpayers have paid dearly over the past decade. A state must implement at least 85 percent of the grade-level CCSSI standards in its schools to be a member of the initiative in good standing.

It’s doubtful the national standards will be more rigorous than what most states now have. Hoover Institution scholar Bill Evers (a former U.S. Education Department official) and Palo Alto engineer Ze’ev Wurman (a key player in developing California’s exemplary math standards) recently observed that the “readiness” standards for English largely are a set of “content-free generic skills.” The standards favor the reading of workplace manuals much more than classic works of literature.

The math content may be “even worse,” say Evers and Wurman. While many colleges require applicants to have completed at least three years of math (including Algebra I and II and Geometry), the CCSSI standards require only a smattering of math beyond Algebra I. Students in schools adhering to these standards could find themselves ineligible for admission to any half-decent college or university.

School reformers have cheered the Obama administration for using RttT to pressure states to be more receptive to independently managed charter schools and use student test scores in evaluating teachers. But if the feds are calling the shots via standards-setting and enforcement, charter schools will be accountable not to local parents but to Washington power brokers, and teachers will teach to tests manipulated by national special interests and be held accountable for results having nothing to do with academic excellence.

Thus does ObamaEd roar ahead on a parallel track with ObamaCare — with equally reckless disregard for transparency and consent of the governed.

Robert Holland ( rholland@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for education policy with the Heartland Institute, a conservative Chicago-based think tank.