Gary Rubinsten has written a series of “reformers,” questioning their claims. In this letter, he writes to B list reformer Michael Petrilli. Understand that a reformer these days is someone who hates unions, views teachers with contempt as lazy and greedy, blames teachers if schools don’t achieve perfection, and welcomes school privatization. Mike is interesting to Gary, mainly because he occasionally deviates from the rightwing script. For example, it has fallen to Mike to defend the Common Core standards on behalf of his employer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is a recipient of generous Gates funding.

Gary was interested to see Mike break ranks with fellow reformers by asserting that college is not really for everyone. That was a break with reformist dogma, which believes passionately in the infinite perfectibility of all, a goal that will be attained presumably when every class is taught by a TFA teacher. Mike broke ranks, but it was only a minor deviation. He still hates unions and loves high-stakes testing and a Common Core.

Gary challenges Mike to answer this simple question: do you really believe that raising standards ever higher will produce big leaps in achievement?

Gary writes :

“But this isn’t the biggest problem I have with the Common Core and the defending of it by you and even by Randi Weingarten. The problem I have, and this is one that I have not heard you address specifically, is that it is based on several shaky premises. The weakest premise, and one I really hope you’ll address, is that “raising standards” — making them harder, you can call it ‘rigor’ if you want to use a euphemism will “raise achievement.” Do you have any basis for that belief? I even saw in a recent thing you wrote,

“For instance, the standards are clear that elementary-school teachers should assign texts that match a student’s grade level, rather than their current reading level. Yet the majority of teachers reported that they continue to assign such “leveled texts” to their charges.

“Have you found that when you try to learn something that starting with an advanced level book on that topic helps you learn? Maybe you like to run on the treadmill. Try this, double the speed that you usually run at. See how that works out for you. I’ve taught for 16 of the past 23 years and my goal is to teach just a little bit beyond the student’s comfort level. When you try to push kids too hard, they get discouraged. This does not maximize learning. Even with things that I try to learn, like Chess and piano, if I try to read too hard of a Chess book or try to play a piano piece that is way above my level — it just doesn’t work. And I’m an adult who is choosing to study this stuff in my spare time, not a child who is forced to sit through a math class. Come on. This is common sense. Yet the opposite, the idea that making it harder is surely going to raise achievement, is the main premise of the argument of the common core.

“Yes, I admit that there can be expectations that are too low, and that’s not good either. I see people at the gym on the treadmill and they’re reading the New Yorker at the same time, and I’m thinking if you’re able to comprehend ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ you’re not running fast enough. But I am not convinced that the old standards were too easy like that. In my experience with teachers and as a teacher, I find that it is to the teacher’s and to the student’s advantage for the teacher to teach at the appropriate level, not too hard, not too easy. This is because students get bored and misbehave when it is too easy and when it is too hard. The students, in a sense, train the teacher to teach to the proper level, and a federal mandate to teach faster and harder upsets this self-correcting feedback loop.

“Did Alabama and Mississippi really have such low standards that it required a federal intervention? I seriously doubt it. We all use the same textbooks and teach the same sorts of things. Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, reading books, writing essays. What do you think all the educators in Mississippi have been doing for all these years before the common core? Surely kids from those states had to take the SATs and they were not completely bewildered by them so much more than kids from other states. I think the argument that the standards were so different before the common core is incredibly exaggerated.

“The common core has been oversold as some necessary miracle cure. It isn’t a miracle. It isn’t going to cure anything. And it is very, very expensive. It was a waste of money, I think. Do you have some sort of estimate of the complete cost of the common core and the expected boost in achievement because of it. You, yourself, admit that schools are not able to perform miracles and get everyone ‘college ready’ so the expected boost can’t be so gigantic. Is it worth all that money?”