<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 2.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Palatino; min-height: 19.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><br></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 2.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><b>Common Core and the Underpants Gnomes</b></font></span></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Palatino; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><i>By </i><a href="http://educationnext.org/author/jgreene/"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7"><i>Jay P. Greene</i></span></a> 01/27/2014</font></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Palatino; color: rgb(31, 56, 238); min-height: 16px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><i></i></span><br></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">It’s amazing how some very smart people can commit billions of dollars and untold human effort to something like Common Core without having thought the thing through. <b>How exactly did they think this was going to work?</b> Didn’t they have meetings? <b>Didn’t someone have to write a paper articulating the theory of change? </b>Didn’t any of them ever take political science classes or read a book on interest group behavior?</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7"><a href="http://jaypgreene.com/2013/11/04/a-chance-for-a-new-fordham/">As I have repeatedly said</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"> would eventually happen, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/new-york-common-core-teachers-schools-education-102614.html?hp=f3"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7">the teacher unions are turning against Common Core in New York and threatening to do the same in other states if high stakes tests aligned to those standards are put in place</span></a>. And the unions are more powerful, better organized, and even better-funded than the Gates Foundation and their mostly DC-based defenders of Common Core. So Common Core will either have to drop the high-stakes tests meant to compel teachers and schools to implement the standards, or Common Core will become yet another set of empty words in a document, like most sets of standards before them.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino; color: #1324a7"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://jaypgreene.com/2013/11/04/a-chance-for-a-new-fordham/">Here is what I expected would happen and I believe is coming true</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000">:</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">As I have written and said on numerous occasions, <b>Common Core is doomed</b> regardless of what I or the folks at Fordham say or do. Either Common Core will be “tight” in trying to compel teachers and schools through a system of aligned assessments and meaningful consequences to change their practice. Or Common Core will be “loose” in that it will be a bunch of words in a document that merely provide advice to educators.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><b>Either approach is doomed. </b> If Common Core tries being tight by coercing teachers and schools through aligned assessments and consequences, it will be greeted by a fierce organized rebellion from educators. It’ll be Randi Weingarten, Diane Ravitch and their army of angry teachers who will drive<a href="http://jaypgreene.com/2009/04/23/famous-steakholders-the-grand-finale/"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7"> a stake</span></a> through the heart of Common Core, not me or any other current critic.<b> If Common Core tries being loose, it will </b><a href="http://jaypgreene.com/2013/03/25/why-common-core-doesnt-matter-and-why-it-does/"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7"><b>be like every previous standards-based reform</b></span></a><b>—a bunch of empty words in a document that educators can promptly ignore while continuing to do whatever they were doing before.</b></font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">This is the impossible paradox for Common Core. <b>To succeed it requires more centralized coercion than is possible (or desirable) </b>under our current political system <b>and more coercive than organized educators will allow. And if it doesn’t try to coerce unwilling teachers and schools, it will produce little change.</b></font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">How did the political strategists at Gates and their DC advocates think this doom would be avoided? Did they imagine that teachers and schools were starving for a good set of standards and would just embrace them once they were issued from the DC Temple in which they were written? Did they think teachers and their unions wouldn’t politically resist an effort to compel compliance to Common Core through high stakes tests? <b>Did they think they could sneak up on teachers and unions and implement the whole thing before anyone would object?</b></font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">I suspect that their thinking was something like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7">Underpants Gnomes from South Park</span></a> whose business plan for profiting from stealing underpants from kids’ drawers during the night is lacking: “Phase 1 — Collect underpants Phase 2 — ? Phase 3 — Profit.” The Gates/Fordham/College Board plan must have been: Phase 1 — Write standards Phase 2 — Incentivize states with federal carrots and sticks to engage in the empty gesture of adopting standards Phase 3 — ? Phase 4 — Learning improves.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><b>Even now I’d love to hear someone try to articulate Common Core’s theory of change. </b>And it is not sufficient to say that this is just the “hard work” of persuading teachers and schools. <b>It is also hard work to jump to the moon—so hard that it is impossible.</b> And I don’t want to hear “Remember: Undoing the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23CommonCore&src=hash"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7">#CommonCore</span></a> would require 46 separate, state-led actions…” That’s true, but states have many worthless pieces of legislation that do little to change the world. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/virginia-anti-sodomy-laws-supreme-court-ban_n_3047489.html"><span style="font: 12.0px Palatino; text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #1324a7">Thirteen states still have anti-sodomy laws despite the fact that the Supreme Court struck down that type of law</span></a>.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><b>I don’t think Gates, Fordham, or anyone else really developed a plausible theory of change for Common Core. </b> Instead, I think they just had the type of magical thinking too common among smart DC policy analysts that <b>if only they had good enough intentions and “messaged” the issue just right, all problems would be overcome.</b> Tell that to the ObamaCare folks who thought that good intentions and artful “messaging” would somehow repeal the law of adverse selection in who would sign up for the risk pools. <b>Our technocratic minds cannot control the behavior of other people, just by thinking about it hard, wanting good things, and talking about it a lot.</b></font></span></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Palatino; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">—Jay P. Greene</font></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Palatino"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">University of Arkansas</font></span></p></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">---------------------------</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Palatino; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div class="" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; "><span class="" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 14px; ">“Teach by Example”</span></span></div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">Will Fitzhugh [founder]</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; "><i class="">The Concord Review</i> [1987]</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">National Writing Board [1998]</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">TCR Institute [2002]</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">978-443-0022; 800-331-5007</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; color: rgb(21, 15, 133); font-size: 14px; "><span class="" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(56, 99, 187); "><a href="http://www.tcr.org/" class="">www.tcr.org</a></span><span class="" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">; <a href="mailto:fitzhugh@tcr.org" class=""><span class="" style="text-decoration: underline; ">fitzhugh@tcr.org</span></a></span></div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; ">Varsity Academics®</div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; "><a href="http://tcr.org/bookstore">tcr.org/bookstore</a></div><div class="" style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Palatino; font-size: 14px; "><a href="http://www.tcr.org/blog">www.tcr.org/blog</a></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></span>
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