Common Core, School Choice & Rethinking Standards-Based Reform. White Paper No. 186

The Common Core curriculum standards represent the culmination of nearly three decades of federally driven centralization of curriculum--including content, pedagogy, and curriculum-based testing--in American K-12 education. Over the course of this period, decisions moved further away from schools and school systems upward toward higher levels of government. In this report, the authors describe the current clash in the education policy arena between the Scientific Management reform of Common Core curricular standards and the Liberation Management reform of parental school choice. The authors spend much of the first half of the report carefully documenting the development, rise, and recent stumble of curriculum standards-based reform, including of the specific type known as Common Core. Much of the second half of the report describes publicly funded private school choice as an alternative reform to Common Core. The cost of private schooling has remained a burden for many families, however, as a household that chooses to send their child to a private school still has to pay taxes in support of public schools their child is not attending as well as increasingly more expensive private school tuition. Public funding of private school choice represents an attempt to make private schooling options accessible to poor families as well as rich ones. The authors point out that educational freedom counts for something as well, and arguably should count for a lot when evaluating education reforms. When families are free to choose their child's school, public or private, the voluntary associations that result may promote civic comity. [Foreword by Patrick J. Wolf.]