Duke Pesta "Are Educational Standards Necessary?"
Channel: Fox Valley Conservative Forum
Date: 2014-08-13

Rigorous and detailed. College and career ready. Higher and explicit. Given the intensity of the conflict between advocates and opponents of Common Core standards, it is rather remarkable how similar each side sounds when advocating for the educational standards that they prefer. Whether speaking of national standards or state-based standards, nearly everyone seems to agree that the problems within education are largely attributable to the lack of “rigorous” standards and standardized testing.
 
But what if nearly everyone is wrong? What if the evidence is overwhelming that government-sanctioned educational standards do not improve academic achievement? And if this is the case, why then have educrats for the last 30 years been pushing for standards?
 
On Tuesday, June 24, Dr. Duke Pesta will tackle the foundational question, “Are Educational Standards Necessary?” In doing so, he will discuss the effectiveness of standards, the centralizing philosophy that drives them, and the relative difference between national standards and state standards.
 
Bio Sketch: Dr. Pesta is a professor of English at UW-Oshkosh and Academic Director of FreedomProject Education. During the last year and a half, Duke has become nationally recognized as a leading critic of Common Core State Standards through his presentations to hundreds of audiences and his interviews on regional and national radio programs.

“It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.”
 --  Albert Shanker, former American Federation of Teachers president in The Wall Street Journal, October 2,1989