is the topic of my new Bloomberg View column.
Classroom practice doesn’t always reflect the standards written in a state’s official documents. That’s one reason the rigor of state standards doesn’t correlate with student achievement. But ensuring uniformity in practice would require the kind of heavy-handed central governing body that supporters of the Common Core strenuously deny they want.
The real problem with the Common Core is not that it represents Big Brother in the classroom, but that it seems unlikely to do much to increase the amount of learning that students do.