Merrill Vargo

Merrill Vargo

Why accept public schools anyhow? Nosotros've all heard the answer: Public schools are the engine of our economy, the cornerstone of our democracy, and the avenue for individuals to achieve their dreams.

This listing of goals sounds like mere rhetoric, but these iii goals are worth thinking about. The offset observation worth making about these iii goals is that nosotros don't get to choose; we need to do all three. Second, though reformers like to emphasize the ways that these iii purposes overlap, these iii purposes also pull united states in unlike directions. This means that when educators start to implement something, they are e'er doing a balancing act. That's okay, and in fact puts educational activity in the mainstream in this nation, which has institute great strength in finding means to balance opposing forces. But it'southward never easy, and it might help if nosotros admitted information technology.

It is important to proceed both the 3 goals – economy, democracy, and private dreams – and the balancing act in listen equally nosotros begin serious work on the Common Core standards. The primary impetus backside the Common Core is the showtime of the 3 goals: public education equally the engine of the economy. The urgency behind the Common Core comes from concerns about global competitiveness. The hope is that by having internationally benchmarked standards that are "college, clearer, fewer" we can energize the economy and avoid beingness left behind by nations like China and India. This is a legitimate goal, merely it is only one of three. A failure to acknowledge this volition crusade the Mutual Cadre to fail. Permit's think about how this can happen, what implementers need to practice to avoid it, and how policymakers can help.

Strengthening democracy

Today this nation is facing two challenges that are every chip as of import as the economic one. The challenges to our republic, goal 2, in the 21st century are many. Citizens are increasingly distracted and sometimes it seems that civic engagement itself is out of fashion. Public schools take traditionally had an important role to play in instruction and giving students a take a chance to model the idea of citizenship. And, this nation is facing a overflowing of immigration, legal equally well as illegal. People are headed to this land from all over the world, bringing a variety of skills, hopes, and dreams only as well their own languages and cultures. This nation has welcomed floods of immigrants before. We know how, and it makes u.s. a stronger, better identify to live. Merely schools must be at that place to help build the common language, culture, and values that hold us together. All in all, schools are a key part of what make us a nation. Can the Mutual Core Land Standards help with this goal Yes. Volition they automatically do then? No.

The other challenge that faces us today is nigh goal three, the gamble for individuals to achieve their dreams. While nosotros think of opportunity as cardinal to our national identity, statistics suggest that the chance to get alee is scarcer these days than ever before. This is what parents care nearly nearly, and schools cannot neglect the goal that is nearly central to their key customers.

For our strongest students, the Common Core Land Standards provide a roadmap to college and careers and therefore hold out the promise of upward mobility. Only for many other students, higher standards and a tougher, better test won't assist merely instead will increase these students' need for additional support. This tin take the course of differentiated instruction in the classroom, extended learning time, access to one-on-1 or small-group tutoring or new online tools. At that place are many solutions to this problem, just none is costless. For these struggling students, the Common Core will aid them if and only if nosotros are willing to brand the investment in these additional supports as well equally in the standards themselves. In a world of scarce resources, such investments can't be taken for granted.

And then, can the Common Core Country Standards heighten global competitiveness, build mutual language, civilisation, values, and likewise provide more kids with access to college and a career?  Maybe, only only if we proceed all three goals in mind and don't look teachers to do a perfect job of meeting any single goal.

This concluding element is how policymakers tin can assistance. If state policy replicates the high-stakes accountability approach that was fundamental to state policy over the last decade, if policymakers do their best to put as much force per unit area as possible on schools to produce high test scores on a test that is both essentially different and essentially harder, they run the take chances of upsetting the frail balance between the 3 goals that is the strength of our public schoolhouse system.

Merrill Vargo is both an experienced academic and a practical skillful in the field of schoolhouse reform. Before founding Pivot Learning Partners (so known as the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, or BASRC) in 1995, Dr. Vargo spent 9 years teaching English in a variety of settings, managed her own consulting firm, and served every bit executive director of the California Institute for Schoolhouse Comeback, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that provides staff evolution and policy analysis for educators. She served as Director of Regional Programs and Special Projects for the California Department of Instruction. She is too a fellow member of Total Circle Fund.

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