Digging up information on Common Core, the mysterious national curriculum being pushed by the federal government to align academic standards for public schools, is about as fruitful and draining as trying to dig a hole into an iced-over Bascom Hill. Common Core, having taken effect before most people even knew it existed — many still don’t — has matured into a nationwide blizzard in what seems like the blink of an eye.

How is this possible? A brief — if somewhat insufficient — explanation is necessary. Common Core was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, known widely as the stimulus package. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia, cash-strapped and bribed with vast sums of money appropriated through the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (part of ARRA), agreed to conform to the national education standards set up by Common Core. Since then, Common Core has entered schools and modified curriculum in unbelievable, baffling and alarming ways, and the promises about the effectiveness and benefits guaranteed by Common Core’s authors are ringing hollow.

Common Core’s authors claim the new standards will “teach students how to make meaning from the texts they read, communicate sophisticated ideas through writing and use verbal communication to reflect on and process new ideas.” Meanwhile, real time implementation of the new, nationally “aligned” classroom materials are overwrought with typos and indecipherable instructions — the revised Saxon math textbook reads, for example, “The Common Core State Standards state that standards are coherent if they are articulated over time as a sequence of topics and performances that are logical and reflect, where appropriate, the sequential or hierarchical nature of the disciplinary content from which the subject matter derrives [sic].” This nonsense comes right after the print, “Saxon Math makes it easy for you to empower your all [sic] of your students to Master [sic] the Common Core….”

Such nonsense would be laughable if not for the negative toll it’s taking on the students who are exposed to it. Mark Rice, a father and a professor in Rochester, New York, said that like many, “When I first heard about the Common Core, I was excited. Many of the college students I teach are unprepared.” However, after seeing the self-confidence of his 8-year-old daughter deteriorate as she was reduced to tears by mathematical concepts she had already learned through the regular math curriculum, Rice’s opinion changed dramatically: “We’ll just keep reassuring her that the problem isn’t her ability to understand math; the problem is how she’s being asked to understand math. The problem is the experimental ‘big idea’ that she’s unknowingly become part of.” How can Common Core boast the ability to “teach students how to make meaning” when students and parents alike can’t make meaning from the course materials’ instructions and questions?

Even Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a supporter of Common Core, has criticized the poor rollout. “You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementations of the Common Core is far worse.” According to the National Review, teachers’ unions are likewise rethinking their endorsements of Common Core, and reports are published that at least 12 states are struggling, and failing, to backtrack away from Common Core. Both teachers’ unions and individual states are disenchanted with the dysfunctional performance of the new curriculum, its failure to live up to its own implied standards and the widening of the achievement gap that’s resulting from the lower scores on new Common Core tests. As explained in a Washington Post article by educator Valerie Strauss, these scores “will result in the shutting out of more students of color, of poverty and English Language Learners from […] the enrichment opportunities they need.”

As is becoming increasingly evident, a national curriculum does not imply a better one. It lacks flexibility and is deaf to local and state input. The government argues that teachers and governors were indispensable in creating Common Core. (That sounds a lot better than calling it mostly a product of David Coleman — look him up). If that’s a justification for Common Core’s existence, though, why not leave education in the hands of even more teachers? Why not leave the standards to be determined at a state level? Perhaps it’s the lure of having a “longitudinal data system,” to mine “personal data on children including information about their health, family income, religious affiliation and homework” that any state that accepted stimulus money is bound to provide with information. Maybe it’s because of an ideological relationship between Common Core’s authors and investors like Bill Gates: He expects the alignment of curriculums to “unleash a powerful market of people providing services for better teaching [….] For the first time there will be a large, uniform base of customers looking at using products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better.” In other words, it’ll open a new market for Microsoft’s products, and in exchange Common Core will demand the use of textbooks written by Gate’s international buddies in the U.N. (namely, UNESCO).

So what do you think?

Theresa Cooley ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.