U.S. News & World Report

Undergirding the Common Core State Standards is an assumption: If we can get all students performing at grade level, then – voila! – high school graduates become college- and career-ready. “Get all students to grade level” is an oft-stated goal, but it’s not particularly useful, and it can have unintended consequences for students and teachers.

“Grade level” is convenient shorthand for average. But real kids in a real classrooms span dramatically far from average. A fifth grader at the 75th percentile is scoring at about a seventh grade average, while her classmate at the 25th percentile is performing at about a third grade level, with some differences depending on the test. In a world with that much variation, it’s easy to see how the emphasis on “common” can start to get problematic if it implies common instruction. A teacher focused on teaching all of those students the same thing would be delivering really poor instruction, frustrating some students and leaving others woefully bored. When we’ve examined initiatives to eliminate “tracked” classes or deliver “college prep for all” curricula, we’ve found that both the highest-performing and lowest-performing students often suffer. Those schools that have been successful at unifying their curriculum have put in substantial time and resources to ensure low-skilled students get sufficient support while high-skilled students continue to be challenged – doing much more than ensuring common instruction...