Issues on Common Core: Inefficient, Too Much Centralization?

United States is now moving to centralize education with Common Core State Standards Initiative but a lot of experts in education policy, educators and even parents are concerned about this move.

Since the Common Core was set as standards for the education system, there have been a lot of negative comments about it. According to Ron Nehring, it would be much better if parents and educators will be provided more options because they believe that Common Core provides some inefficient ways of learning.

Several experts in education policy wrote their own essays as posted by Heritage about their thoughts on Common Core and centralized education plan.

Lindsay Burke, a Heritage Foundation fellow, stated in the introduction of the report how Common Core started and became funded by the Obama administration. Whatever the motivation that comes with this proposal, the forty-six states have signed the waiver to make this project possible.

Director of education at Cato Institute, Neal McCluskey, mentioned in his essay that the direction of Common Core is to make a federal curriculum. He believes that centralization of education is not the answer. Decentralization is better because each individual (student) are special and should be treated as what they are.

CEO of Accountability Works, Theodor Rebarber also expressed that the ways of Common Core are disingenuous where children are learning in such an instructional method. What Rebarber possibly meant in his statement is that there is a big difference with the conventional way of teaching which is more efficient than what is proposed by Common Core that makes the teaching method longer and unusual.

Another essay written by Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, says that College Board president, David Coleman, known as the architect of Common Core, has the College Board under his leadership.

The board is changing all its Advanced Placement (AP) exams including several AP subjects such as Physics, World History, U.S. Government and Politics and Art History. The College Board's AP subjects cover all the rest of the curriculum while Common core is just covering English and Math.

"It is time to wake up and realize that Common Core has radically expanded its reach, capturing the entire spectrum of the curriculum," Kurtz said. "If we are ever to restore local control and public accountability to America's education system, the College Board's recent power grab must be a central component of the debate over Common Core."

The director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association, William Estrada, wrote that he is concerned about homeschooling which is growing bigger in the country and Common Core will have an opposing effect to it. Common core is applied to public schools already but once it will be nationalized, the policymakers will likely argue on how they can be assured that homeschooling will provide good education if they are not taking the same standardized tests.

Lastly, Williamson Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, has his own say. This initiative weakens the competitive capability of federalism where public schools are losing bureaucracy and just following commands from other capitals. He envisions that there will be groups of parents who wouldn't want this Common Core to be applied in their own state.