Anti-Common Core bill is a dumbing down of Michigan students

This is an excerpt of a column I wrote this week for Deadline Detroit:

 

By Chad Selweski

A bill newly introduced in the state Legislature will grant local school officials a passing grade even as the facts show that Michigan students lag behind the national average in test scores, and the U.S. average subsequently ranks far below many Western industrial nations in student performance.

That reality, more than trade agreements or globalization or immigration, puts our Michigan kids at a disadvantage when trying to secure a post-high school job that offers decent wages and a promising future.

The House bill targets for elimination the Common Core education reform program, which has been disparaged by myths and alternative facts over the past several years. Its basic premise relied upon wholly modernizing the U.S. K-12 student testing process so that our kids don’t lag so far behind the rest of the industrialized world.

Though Common Core was encouraged by the Obama administration, it is not a federally mandated curriculum — or a curriculum at all. It consists of learning outcomes that broadly set national goals in math, science, English and social studies. It was created by the bipartisan National Governor’s Association, along with school superintendents nationwide, after many years of research. Before Common Core became the subject of Obama-based conspiracy theories, it was widely embraced across the nation by business, labor and a bipartisan array of state legislators, including in Michigan.

The bottom line: U.S. students are mediocre, on a global basis,  and Common Core is an attempt to raise test scores, not just on a national average but in every state and every school district.

 

Continue reading here.

 

 

Photo: Deadline Detroit/Shutterstock