Education Standards Are Now Just A Political Mess

While Republicans and Democrats have long argued over just how much money should be put toward educating students, they used to agree that students should be held to a high standard -- and that served this country well, making American students among the best educated in the world. But things have changed, and now some other countries have caught and passed us in the quality of education offered (and the achievement of their students).

A few years ago, in an effort to strengthen education in this country, the government had a group of educators develop standards they hoped all schools would adopt. They called these "common core standards" (CCS), and offered a significant bump in education funding to states that accepted the new (and higher) standards. Some states have accepted the CCS and implemented them. Others have accepted them and are in the process of implementing them (or soon will be). And a group of states (red states) have refused to accept them.

Why are some states refusing to accept the new higher education standards? Do they really want the students in their state to be dumber than the students in other states (and countries)? Not really. They are doing it because right-wing politicians have made the CCS a political football, and because evangelicals are unhappy that the new standards don't allow the teaching of religion as science or conservative propaganda as history.

Right-wingers claim the new standards represent a federal government takeover of schools. Of course that's ludicrous. The establishment of higher standards for all students has nothing to do with school control. The right-wing has turned this into a political issue because they hate the president (either for racial or ideological reasons), and won't support anything the president approves of.

The sad part of all this is that both parents and teachers have been sucked into these political games. Note in the charts above that both parents and teachers are split over the new higher standards -- with Republicans opposing them and Democrats accepting them. What should be an education debate has been turned into a political (and religious) debate. And the people being hurt by this playing of political games with education are the students (especially in the red states, which seem to be happy with lower standards).

I'm not a teacher, but the idea of higher education standards seems like a good one to me. Maybe there are some things that need to be changed with the implementation of the CCS, but shouldn't that be a discussion among education professional -- not politicians?

These charts were made from Gallup Poll surveys of parents and teachers.