EdNext Editor-in-Chief Paul E. Peterson penned a recent op-ed in favor of the Common Core State Standards. Peterson highlighted a curious result of an EdNext survey of Americans, in which only 21% of those surveyed gave American schools an “A” or “B” but 49% of those surveyed gave their own schools an “A” or “B”. Clearly, there is a disconnect between perception and reality, which in turn impacts how Americans think about school reform. If the problem is mostly somewhere else out there in the morass of American schools, then there is little impulse to work locally for reform. This is especially crippling given how much more of a chance for success local reform generally has as opposed to national reform.
Peterson also described the results of a recent Ednext poll, where participants were shown how their local schools rank in comparison to the performance of schools elsewhere in the state or in the nation as a whole. Once respondents learned how their local school districts actually measured up, they became increasingly in favor of school reform.
With regards to the Common Core, Peterson stated, “If the attempt to establish a common framework for what students need to learn can identify more precisely how well each school is doing, then it will provide the public with a tool it needs to correct its own self-deception.”
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