Core Objectives

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan raised some hackles when he told a gathering of state education superintendents on Nov. 15 that fresh complaints about the Common Core State Standards were mostly from “white suburban moms” upset that their children weren’t as “brilliant as they thought they were.” Local school districts weren’t “quite as good as they thought” under the new standards, he added.

The standards have been adopted by 45 states, along with the District of Columbia, since 2010. They aim to establish a rigorous set of academic achievement benchmarks for all kindergarten through 12th-grade students. Rollout of related changes, including new assessments to measure progress, is under way and expected to be fully implemented in the 2014-2015 school year.

Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at Harvard Graduate School of Education, served as secretary of education in Massachusetts from 2008 through 2012. He spoke with the Gazette about the standards and some of the controversy surrounding them. ...

To read the complete interview, visit the Harvard Gazette.