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Arne Duncan

The Surprising Conservative Roots of the Common Core: How Conservatives Gave Rise to ‘Obamacore’

BY September 9, 2015
When Jeb Bush announced he was exploring a run for President, TIME warned that Bush was “going to have to win over the Republican conservative base, which hates Common Core with the fire of a thousand suns.” In case conservative loathing of the Common Core ran the risk of being understated, the Washington Post weighed in with an analysis stating that, “The conservative base hates—hates, hates, hates—the Common Core education standards.” That media shorthand vastly oversimplifies not just the debate among conservatives over the Common Core but the rich, conservative roots of the standards themselves.

Getting to the Root

As I show in a new Brookings paper , the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) embody conservative principles in setting goals for student learning that date back to Ronald Reagan. In fact, compared to his predecessors in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has substantially shrunk the federal role in advocating for anything resembling a model national curriculum, national standards and national assessments. Implementation of the Common Core standards is still proceeding in more than 40 states in no small measure due to the fact that the Obama administration did not repeat the federal overreach of their GOP predecessors by funding the development of national standards and model curriculum. The conservative roots of the Common Core are little known today. Even among reporters who cover the education beat, few have  recounted, except in passing, the sweeping, self­-described “crusade” that Senator Lamar Alexander launched to promote national standards and voluntary national assessments when he was secretary of education in the elder Bush’s administration. George H.W. Bush’s America 2000 plan, which Lamar Alexander personally helped to craft, was a remarkably ambitious reform program that makes Barack Obama and Arne Duncan’s efforts to encourage voluntary state adoption of the Common Core standards look timid. Unlike the Obama administration and Secretary Duncan, Secretary Alexander supported the development of voluntary national standards developed with federal funding, for seven subject areas (English language arts, science, history, geography, arts, civics, and foreign languages). Secretary Alexander himself called the federally ­funded development of national standards “the most comprehensive rethinking ever of what we teach.” The stark difference in outcomes between the America 2000 plan (which died quietly in Congress) and the CCSS stems from the fact that the leaders of the Common Core movement learned from and avoided many of the political missteps committed with America 2000. Instead of seeking federal funding and input in developing the Common Core standards, governors and chief state school officers scrupulously kept the federal government out of the process of drafting the standards. Instead of trying to set standards for teaching politically sensitive subjects like U.S. history, the CCSS honed in on just English Language Arts and math. And instead of outlining model curriculum, the federal government remained mum about selecting curriculum.

The Godmother

In many respects, the story of the evolving conservative role on the Common Core is rife with irony and sweeping role reversals. If Lamar Alexander can lay claim to being the original political godfather of the Common Core State Standards, his Assistant Secretary at the department, Diane Ravitch, is their intellectual godmother. During her 18-­month stint at the department from 1991 to 1993, Ravitch’s chief assignment was to make the case for national academic standards. After leaving the Education Department, she wrote a 186­-page citizen’s guide for the Brookings Institution advocating for national standards. (Today, Ravitch is a leader of the progressive opposition to the Common Core). Maintaining political purity, fostering fealty to federalism, or opposing all­ things Obama are important goals for many conservatives. Yet those factors shouldn’t ultimately matter more in assessing the Common Core than examining its actual impact on students. In a 1995 essay on her experience in developing national standards, Diane Ravitch warned that “Educators have an unfortunate habit of making the best the enemy of the good, thus beating back any proposed reform that does not promise to solve all problems simultaneously.” The vast majority of states have stood by the Common Core, and so far refused to let the best become the enemy of the good. Today, it’s time for conservative critics of the Common Core to stop rewriting history, halt the maelstrom of misinformation on the Common Core, and pivot away from pandering to political prejudices.  
David Whitman was the chief speech writer for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan from mid-2009 to November 2014. A full version of this post originally appeared on the Brookings website.
Photo by woodleywonderworks, CC-licensed.
David Whitman was the chief speech writer for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan from mid-2009 to November 2014. Prior to that, he covered social policy for U.S. News & World Report for nearly two decades, from 1985 to 2003. He is the author of the award-winning, “Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner City Schools and the New Paternalism” (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2008), a two-year study ...
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