CORE: Route to underachievement

Thank you for printing “What parents should know about Common Core,” submitted by Fred Woeller. Clearly, good people have worked hard to do good things for our children and our future. Despite those good intentions, Common Core, as described in the September 8 article, has serious flaws.

• Any government program that sets out to ensure or guarantee an outcome will fail its objective. When a government entity or politician says they will “ensure,” “make sure,” or “guarantee” something, we can be sure of only one thing: a heavy hand will limit our choices. Exceptions are rare.

• The repeated assertion that Common Core will ensure students are ready for college or career simply ignores the extreme diversity of students. The basic concept of “No Child Left Behind” has the same fallacy. The goal should be to enable each student to reach, then extend, their own potential.

• Consistency and uniformity, such as for math topics, will not lead to excellence anywhere, but to mediocrity everywhere. Adopting a single method, even one that has been proven, puts a generation at risk of underachievement. A “proven” method involves many factors, such as teacher preparation, which may not be duplicated in other situations. Even if one scheme could be best everywhere, a better method will come along to beat it, unless policy stifles the innovation.

• Living things thrive in competition. Human beings are living things that thrive in competition. Education policy should enable exceptional achievements and abandon systemic failures. Competition, not uniformity, leads to excellence.

• Too much of education systematically hammers the fun out of learning. Enforcing more administrative structure will make this severe problem worse. Children delight in learning. Successful schools and teachers join in the fun that children naturally seek and they infuse the curriculum with excitement. Our children need more positive motivation to learn. Teachers need freedom and resources to focus on children; they don’t need micromanagement.

• Some of the named “critical content for ALL students” is highly questionable. Most people won’t object to the topics, but teachers and parents should decide what is critical. Specifically, in my opinion, classic myths and stories from around the world and Shakespeare don’t belong in this list.

ROD BRISTOL

Coeur d’Alene