A favorite refrain of Common Core advocates is that their opponents are peddling “misinformation.” Well Core fans are quite adept at doing the same thing, and as a new Washington Post article reinforces, no case of this is more egregious than pretending that Core adoption was supposed to be “state‐led” and “voluntary,” and federal coercion was just unwanted Obama administration interference. That is simply not true: Core crusaders wanted federal involvement from before the Common Core was even given its name.
On numerous occasions I have cited the 2008 report Benchmarking for Success, from the Core‐creating National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, as indisputable evidence that Core supporters wanted federal pressure to push state adoption of common, internationally benchmarked standards. That report – written before there was an Obama administration – says explicitly that Washington should “offer funds” and provide “tiered incentives” to push states onto common standards. It was a call reiterated on the website of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, though it was eventually removed.
Despite this crystal clear evidence, Core defenders have continued to imply that federal intervention has all been the unwanted, unappreciated pushiness of President Obama. Indeed, just last Friday, Michael Petrilli of the Core‐supporting Thomas B. Fordham Foundation said it again in a discussion with AEI’s Mike McShane. Go to the 28:50 mark to hear Petrilli say, “I think many of us could make the argument that this whole thing would have played out very differently if the Obama administration had just stayed out of it.” And Petrilli is not alone in suggesting that the Core initiative was always supposed to be fed‐free. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin (R), signing a bill removing her state from the Core last week, implied the same thing, saying:
Unfortunately, federal overreach has tainted Common Core. President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards. The results are predictable. What should have been a bipartisan policy is now widely regarded as the president’s plan to establish federal control of curricula, testing and teaching strategies.
Obviously, based on Benchmarking for Success alone, this is utterly misleading. But what the Washington Post has now reported, in a piece largely about the role of Bill Gates in pushing the Core, is that Core supporters not only suggested that there be federal incentives, they worked with the Obama administration to get them:
Duncan and his team leveraged stimulus money to reward states that adopted common standards.
They created Race to the Top, a $4.3 billion contest for education grants. Under the contest rules, states that adopted high standards stood the best chance of winning. It was a clever way around federal laws that prohibit Washington from interfering in what takes place in classrooms. It was also a tantalizing incentive for cash‐strapped states.
Heading the effort for Duncan was Joanne Weiss, previously the chief operating officer of the Gates‐backed NewSchools Venture Fund.
As Race to the Top was being drafted, the administration and the Gates‐led effort were in close coordination.
Note that the article goes on to say that an early draft of RTTT mentioned the Core by name, but supporters objected that that would be too much for some states to handle. Instead, in contrast to what the article suggests, to be fully competitive for grants the regulations required adoption of standards common to a “majority” of states – not just “high” standards – a parameter that only included Common Core.
Now, I don’t think this will happen, but at this point it would at least clear the air for Core supporters to openly admit that they always wanted to employ federal pressure, and gladly worked with President Obama to get it. At the very least, it would make their own accusations of “misinformation” a little more tolerable.