Arnold F. Shober – författare

When did the Common Core evolve from pet project to pariah among educators and parents? This book examines the rise and fall of our national education standards from their inception to the present day.Parents, teachers, and political groups have waged debates over the Common Core since the standards' adoption in 2010. This timely examination explores the shifting political alliances related to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, explains why initial national support has faded, and considers the major debates running through the Common Core controversy. The book is organized around four themes of political conflict: federal versus state control, minorities versus majorities, experts versus professionals, and elites versus local preferences. The work reviews the politics of state and national standards, evaluating the political arguments for and against the Common Core: federal overreach, lack of evidence for effectiveness, lack of parental control, lack of teacher input, improper adaptive testing, overtesting, and connections to private education-reform funders and foundations. The work includes a short primer on the Common Core State Standards Initiative as well as on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balance, two state-level organizations that have worked on the standards. An informative appendix presents brief descriptions of major interest groups and think tanks involved with the standards initiative along with a timeline of American educational standards reforms and the Common Core.

Detailed study of how real education reform works.The No Child Left Behind Act declared that improving education in every school in the United States was a top national priority. However, this act did not acknowledge how state departments of education have successfully constructed reforms for the past few decades, despite the power struggle between governors, legislators, school districts, and state boards of education. Drawing upon archival sources, state budget documents, interviews, and statistical analysis, Splintered Accountability amply demonstrates that sustained education reform is best left in the hands of the relatively autonomous state departments of education in order to maintain curriculum standards, school finance, and teacher licensure systems. Comprehensive and successful education reform originates from within state education agencies, propelled by savvy state superintendents.Arnold F. Shober is Assistant Professor of Government at Lawrence University.