The Common Core "State" Standards: The Arts and Education Reform

As the Common Core "State" Standards (CCSS)1 become reality, teachers have reason for concern. Their autonomy and intellectual freedom to craft curriculum, tests, and assessments are relinquished and put in the hands of "experts" and testing companies such as Pearson. This reform to public education has consequently marginalized the arts and exacerbated the inequities of people in poverty and with disabilities.These populations flourish when engaged in autonomous acts of discovery, experimentation, and hypothetical thinking, all antithetical to the new reform.Published in 2010, the Common Core State Standards initiative for school reform has been intended to replace the current state standards. The initiative has been funded by the richest private foundations-primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Broad Foundation-wielding their influence on Obama's and Arne Duncan's polices. It has been backed by the most powerful federal agencies in education: the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, Achieve Inc., the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and the United States Department of Education (Chapman, 2011).As of January 27,2013,45 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia2 have adopted the CCSS in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics, which will replace current state standards. States that accepted federal money have committed their schools to the most prescriptive and formalized curriculum we have seen in this country. The Common Core "State" Standards have aligned national curriculum and standardized testing to the effect that testing inexorably drives curriculum.Teachers, principals and, ultimately, schools are accountable for student test scores. Consistently low performing schools face corrective action, restructuring, or closure. Most at stake are the arts, faced with elimination if test scores are not raised in ELA and mathematics (Kohn, 2013). The curriculum materials of CCSS will be fully implemented by most states in 2013-2014.3National Core Arts StandardsIn January 2013, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) released National Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual Framework for the Arts, the revision of the National Arts Standards. Its purpose is to place the arts in the curriculum beyond their "integration" into ELA and mathematics.4 Members of the coalition intend to dispel any doubt that the arts have a meritorious place within the curriculum. Inspiration for the arts framework came from McTighe and Wiggins (2005), authors of Understanding by Design. Among their foci are essential questions that promote engaged and provocative dialogue.The arts framework invites rhizomatic and hypertexual learning in contrast to the CCSS's linear processes of transmitting knowledge, although the authors must make clear that NCCAS standards conform in direct and meaningful ways to the CCSS. The arts framework is about to undergo a second review at the College Board5 to align the goals of NCCAS with CCSS and to determine whether the standards will or will not be framed to coordinate with CCSS.The Arts According to David ColemanDavid Coleman, a prominent architect of CCSS and the recently appointed president of the College Board, has taken the podium at several satellite organizations of CCSS to clarify his philosophy, often to soothe the nerves of educators and administrators who have taken offense at a clumsy comment. Coleman's presence at a panel given at the Common Core headquarters in Washington, DC, is an example of a strategic event. The Common Core is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, and founded in 2007 to conduct research and advocacy in K-12 education. The Common Core is unrelated to CCSS but has since become its partner, providing CCSS with tools such as curriculum maps. Common Core has co-opted CCSS's language of content-rich reform, and the knowledge that "students need to learn." Lynne Munson, president and executive director of the Common Core, led a symposium in Washington, DC, on March 15, 2012, provocatively called "Truant from School: History, Science and the Arts. …