Common Core Proponents Change Bar For Success

Remember when Common Core proponents used to brag about having 45 states and D.C. on the Common Core bandwagon?

Now they say they'd be happy with far fewer states using CCSS and the CCSS tests:

“The politics have reached the point where they’re getting in the way of actually implementing” the standards, says Andrew Rotherham, cofounder of Bellwether Education Partners, an education research and policy group based in Sudbury, Mass.

“The perception is one of momentum [for the anti-Common Core people], and politics is a game of perception,” he says. “If you end up with 25 states doing [Common Core] in a meaningful way, that’s an enormous victory, but it won’t be perceived that way.”

From 45 states + D.C. to 25 states.

How the might have fallen.

In the end, if 20 states stop using Common Core, the CCSS testing consortia are sure to die (especially now that the federal money is drying up) and once the CCSS tests die, there is little for reformers to use to ensure that the standards are being taught even in the 25 states that nominally will still be on the CCSS bandwagon.

There was a reason why reformers pushed Common Core, tests based on Common Core and teacher evaluations tied to tests scores all at the same time all across the nation.

It was to ensure that the standards were taught in every school and they were going to force this through the tests and the evaluations.

But the more states that drop CCSS and the ancillary CCSS tests, the less powerful the sticks to enforce CCSS in other states become, especially if the PARCC and Smarter Balanced testing consortia go the way of the dinosaurs.

Nice try by Eduwonk trying to put a winning face on a loss, but if 20 states drop off the CCSS bandwagon, that's disastrous for CCSS proponents and supporters.