A reader suggests that we change our views of the proper goals of education:
“As important as core curriculum standards are they should not be the primary mission of public education. We would do well to adopt the four ancient civic virtues of Wisdom, Courage, Justice and Temperance as guidelines for student learning, K-12. Elegant in their simplicity and effective across the curriculum, they are the invaluable virtues of a healthy democracy. Free of religious cant and easy to remember, they are a most effective tool for students to gauge the relevance of what they learn. They are what we need and want from our public schools but are afraid to ask for.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Alas, dear reader, how would we measure progress in the development of said values? How might we measure teacher effectiveness?
http://dan-mcconnell.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-common-core-of-more-vital-learning.html
Not exactly the same standards, but same idea. Not that difficult and likely less expensive to do community-based practical/”lab” approach that utilizes foundational academic skills (data collection a local responsibility) and community involvement projects. Starting with closely guided “get to know the places and people” within your neighborhood, gradually handing over to more independence, wider range, community service/sponsored employment/college credit experiences.
As easily as we will ever measure the “four C’s” allegedly at the heart of the Common Core: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication are as ineffable as these virtues, and easily mapped onto them: Wisdom=Critical Thinking, the latter essential for the development of the former; Courage=Creativity, which similarly requires a connection to an emotional heart space and a sense of personal responsibility and agency, Justice=Collaboration, for it is in working out with others how fairness is not the same as equality that we establish true justice, Temperance=Communication, for it is in speaking articulately about our desires that we discover their limits.
It is only when we recognize that these four C’s, like the virtues, and almost any other assessment of student learning or teacher effectiveness, are not susceptible to numerical measures, that we can return to the real task of education.
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Courage, Justice, and Temperance are fairly clear as they stand in English. The Greek word, “sophos,” which is presented above as “Wisdom” would be better translated as Prudence, the ability to judge aright the consequences of an act. Prudence is sadly lacking these days when people advocate policies based on their wishes rather than on an estimation of the probable effects of the policy in reality.
I conclude that the things most worthwhile to teach cannot be quantified, such as Wisdom, Courage, Justice and Temperance.
We’ll just have to get comfortable with this foundational truth, if we are to make a positive difference in the lives of children.
I like what you say.
I worry about what the effects of preparation of students for the high stakes testing is teaching the children. The cheating, the endless test preparation, the obvious pressure on teachers, and the description of children’s achievement as they interpret what they observe. The added study for children that fail again after the double periods, and un wanted tutorials. There are millions of test scores that show very low performance resulting from what we are doing. The absences in the 8th,9th,and 10th grade are a symptom of something. How does this make good citizens?
Control and compliance are at the heart of the Common Core, and even those can’t actually be measured.
By turning our valuation of learning over to an invisible metric, though, we renounce the judgement and agency of every actual person in a classroom, a school, a district, and a nation. To whom are we even surrendering our children’s education?
Who are the entrepreneurs who demand legal authority to operate in such a monopoly?
Yes, they are renouncing “the judgment of every actual person in a classroom.” It’s a classic edubully trick: require public schools to drive students to distraction, boredom, inattention and absenteeism through standardized testing and the like, then blame the teaching staff for the predictable results. The cure being, of course, the privatization and charterization of all public education.
On the bubble-in tests required of all Broad Academy graduates is one item that requires them to correctly identify the proper spelling of “sucker punch.” [Sigh. Satire alert for all Rheephormistas who troll this blog.]
I was a little taken aback at the suggestion that CCSS had any connection to virtues. For some reason my comments didn’t appear here, but I reproduced them at Schools Matter.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/12/debunking-common-core-curriculums-so.html
Debunking Common Core Curriculum’s so-called Four C’s
Words do matter, and proposing goals is an area where the educational reformers are way out in front of the rationalist. As an example consider President Obama’s 2009 speech where he spoke of the educational way as leading to the goals of national prosperity, international competition, earnings, jobs, a quality future, success, a knowledge economy, and eliminating the cost of achievement gaps. These goals have hints of a plan for an Orwellian future. Jefferson included “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the most important rights. Would it then be a reasonable educational goal to assist each individual to realize these rights?