Common Core Standards in Higher Education

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on



I have mentioned before that I don't see very much interest in higher education for the Common Core State Standards, the controversial state-based educational-standards system that is impacting K-12 education. I did come across an article from The Chronicle titled "College Leaders Sign On to Support Common Core Educational Standards" that discusses how 200+ higher-education leaders have created an organization to voice support for Common Core. Thirty states are represented by mostly administrators at public colleges and universities.





The Common Core standards were designed in 2009 and adopted in the next two years by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The Standards have support from the Obama administration but Governors Fallin (R - Oklahoma) and Haley (R - South Carolina) recently signed laws ending adoption of the reforms in their states and Indiana’s Board of Education formally abandoned the benchmarks in late April.



If all this Common Core sounds more political than educational, then you are thinking what many educators are saying. Much of the Common Core conversations that get media coverage come from meetings like that of the National Association of System Heads, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities - places where discussion on the Higher Ed for Higher Standards was also conceived.



Common Core opponents would also point out that the new coalition is a project of the Collaborative for Student Success, which receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which has been a promoter of the Common Core.


According to the Chronicle article:


But public colleges and universities face their own challenges with Common Core integration. According to a survey conducted by the Center for Education Policy at George Washington University, education agencies in 16 states reported that working with public colleges to enact Common Core standards posed a "major" challenge. Published in September, the survey also found that public colleges in 27 states were having difficulty adapting teacher-training programs to the benchmarks. State education agencies also reported that colleges in 18 states were resisting the reforms in other ways.


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