Common Core: 4. Aren't We Already "Globally Competitive"?

CCSS leaders want a national curriculum so that all students in the future “will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.” The underlying message is that students—and, by extension, the United States—are not able to do so now, a conclusion that has little foundation. Let’s look at this conclusion from two perspectives.

First, critics of education often point to disparities between the performance of U.S. students and their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere on international achievement tests, such as PISA, which is administered in more than fifty countries. The lower U.S. ranking, say critics, is evidence that American students are not “globally competitive.”

However, there is a strong correlation between student achievement and family background, with socioeconomic status being a key factor in student achievement as measured by standardized tests of all sorts. Students disadvantaged by poverty do predictably poorer, as a group, on measures of academic achievement. Schools universally, not only in the United States, are relatively powerless to change this fundamental dynamic. When PISA results are controlled for SES, the ranking of U.S. students is considerably higher.

Finland, for example, is often cited for ranking far above the United States in student achievement as measured by PISA. However, in Finland only 1 in 25 students lives in poverty compared to 1 in 5 in the United States, according to Duke University professor Helen F. Ladd (in Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence, Working Paper Series SAN11-01, November 4, 2011).

The Common Core standards do not take into account the effects of SES on teaching and learning. CCSS is top-down policy, and as Ladd points out, “while education policy makers have direct control over school quality, they have less control over educational outcomes because of the role that context—and particularly the family background of the students—plays in shaping educational outcomes.” Adopting the Common Core is likely not to make any difference in American students’ ability to be “globally competitive” for this reason.

Second, there is little evidence that America is not already globally competitive. Put aside the rhetoric of politicians, pundits, and policy wonks who decry our so-called failing schools, and the cold evidence is that the goal of becoming globally competitive by promoting a top-down, “rigorous” curriculum is largely disingenuous. By the numbers the United States is far from being a poor global competitor. Internationally known scholar Yong Zhou (http://zhaolearning.com) runs the numbers this way, drawing on a variety of authoritative sources:

• Japan, which was expected to overtake the U.S. because of its superior education in the 1980s, has lost its #2 status in terms of size of economy. Its GDP is about 1/3 of America’s. Its per capita GDP is about $10,000 less than that in the U.S.

• The U.S. is the 6th wealthiest country in the world in 2011 in terms of per capita GDP. It is still the largest economy in the world.

• The U.S. ranked 5th out of 142 countries in Global Competitiveness in 2012 and 4th in 2011.

• The U.S. ranked 2nd out 82 countries in Global Creativity, behind only Sweden in 2011.

• The U.S. ranked 1st in the number of patents filed or granted by major international patent offices in 2008, with 14,399 filings, compared to 473 filings from China, which supposedly has a superior education.

Comments Zhao, “Obviously America’s poor education told by the numbers has not ruined its national security and economy.”

The key factor that the Common Core leaders have failed to take into account is poverty and how SES affects teaching and learning. Ladd, cited earlier, suggests that “strategies designed to address the educational needs of low income children will cost money, could be complex and undoubtedly will need to differ from place to place depending on the local context.”

The Common Core State Standards contain no provision for responding to “local context.” Such rigidity will ill serve students everywhere.