So what is the common core?
It's a very simple thing.
It's a written explanation of what knowledge
kids should achieve at various milestones
in their educational career.
So it's writing down in sixth grade which
math things should you know, in ninth grade
which math things should you know, in twelfth
grade which math things should you know.
And you might be surprised to learn how poor
those, I'll call those "standards."
But to be clear, it's not curriculum.
It's not a textbook, it's not a way of teaching,
it's just writing down, "Should you know this
part of algebra?
Should you know trigonometric functions?
Should you be able to recognize a graph of
this type?"
And doing that very well is hard, because
there's certain dependencies, if you teach
it in the wrong order, if you try and teach
too much at once, too much too early, which
the U.S. was doing a lot of that, it can be
very, very poor.
And if you compare, we had 50 of these things,
and there was quite a bit of divergence.
Some states had trigonometry, some didn't.
Some had pie charts, some didn't.
And so ironically, what had happened was the
textbook companies had gone in and told the
committees that make these things up that
they should add things over time.
And so we had math textbooks over double the
size of any of the Asian countries.
And we had the ordering, in almost every one
of our 50, which is strange, you'd think if
you had 50, one of them would randomly be
really, really well-ordered.
Some were more ambitious than others.
So for example, being high, that is, having
the twelfth grade expectation be high, there
were a few like Massachusetts who were quite
good in that respect.
And so when kids from Massachusetts take international
tests or SAT, anything, they do better.
Better than the rest of the country.
And so often when you see those country rankings,
they'll take Massachusetts and show you where
it would be if it was a separate country,
and it's way past the U.S. that now is virtually
at the bottom of any of the well-off countries,
with the Asian countries totally dominating
the top six slots now.
Finland had a brief period where they were
up high, and now they're not even the European
leader anymore.
So a bunch of governors said, "Hey, why are
we buying these expensive textbooks?
Why are they getting so thick?
Are standards high enough or quality enough?"
And I think it was the national governor's
association said, "We ought to get together
on this."
A bunch of teachers met with a bunch of experts,
and so in reading and writing and math, these
knowledge levels were written down.
And at some point, 46 states had adopted that.
Curriculum, a variety of competitive curriculum
now that small companies can get into it because
it's not just doing a book for Florida, and
so the barrier to entry that was created by
the large firms there goes away.
The idea that those committees rev it so you
can't use the old textbooks, that idea will
go away, because in math, this can have real
durability.
Changing your math standards, it's not like
some new form of math is being invented.
And there has been in a sense, a national
expectation.
When you take the SAT test, it has trigonometry
on it.
So if you're in a state that doesn't have
that, you're going to get a low score.
And they use a certain notation in the way
they do the math, and certain states were
different than that, so you're screwed.
If you move from state to state...
Arthur: In the vernacular.
Bill: ...you experience discontinuity because
of this.
And it's made it very hard to compare things.
And this is an era where we have things like
Khan Academy that are trying to be a national
resource, and yet they, you sit down, it'll
tell you, are you up to the sixth grade level,
are you up to the ninth grade level, are you
ready to graduate from high school?
And so this common core was put together.
If somebody want...and states will decide
this thing.
Nobody's suggesting that the federal government
will, even in this area, which is not curriculum,
will dictate these things.
States can opt in, they can opt out.
As they do that, they should look at the status
quo, which is poor, they should look and find
something that's high achievement, that's
got quality, and if they can find something
that's that, if they have two they're comparing,
they ought to probably pick something in common.
Because to some degree, this is an area where
if you do have commonality, it's like an electrical
plug, you get more free market competition.
Scale is good for free market competition.
Individual state regulatory capture is not
good for competition.
And so this thing in terms of driving innovation,
you'd think that pro-capitalistic market-driven
people would be in favor of it, but somehow
it's gotten to be controversial.
And states will decide.
Whatever they want to decide is fine, but
at the end of the day, it does affect the
quality of your teaching, it does affect when
your kids go to take what are national-level
tests, whether they are going to do well or
not do well.
