Letter: Common Core needs more discussion

Your editorial on the Common Core ["Brave new world of Common Core," Editorial, April 4] -- the national education standards that are rapidly transitioning to a national K-12 curriculum -- looks to be the unfortunate product of fence-straddling. While rightly recognizing that "this one-size-fits-all curriculum doesn't leave much room for innovation" and limits a teacher's ability to adjust to individual needs, you nevertheless endorse adding standards for science, technology and history to the current ones for English and mathematics.

Your fall to the left side of the fence could have resulted from your reliance on a false premise -- namely, in your words: "If we're going to fund education via Washington, we need a common baseline." As no less an authority than the U.S. Department of Education recognized in a report updated February 13, a "substantial majority" of the $1.15 trillion being spent on education in 2011-12 will come from state, local and private sources. The federal share of K-12 spending will amount to just 10.8 percent.

Yes, the Obama administration has used Race to the Top incentive grants as a way to bribe states into adopting the Common Core, and it's dangling waivers from No Child Left Behind enforcement as further inducement to acquiesce to a nationalized curriculum. However, states and localities still bear 90 percent of the burden of financing public education, and under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which deals with states' rights, states and localities properly have all the authority over curricula. You are correct that the move toward a quasi-federal curriculum has proceeded with scant debate. It is time for a robust one to begin.

Robert Holland, Chicago

Editor's note: The writer is a senior fellow for education policy at The Heartland Institute.