Aside from all the discussion and debate over the academic side of Common Core, there are other serious concerns that diminish Common Core from the start. This blog post is about American culture resident in the fundamental nature of the American psyche surrounding athletics, especially at the secondary level.
First, since athletics is viewed as an extension of the classroom curriculum, should not the rally-cry of rigor pertain to expectations of both? But this is not the case. I write about this in my new book The Wrong Direction for Today’s Schools: The Common Core and It’s Impact on American Schools (2015, Rowman & Littlefield). This is the first cultural concern that will never be overcome for Common Core to be successful. It cannot connect itself to the very thing to which it is supposed to extend. Try as we might, and with great failure looming, to compare our nation to those across the ponds. Do these nations also have litigious societies catering to whims and hurt feelings, breeding fear into school boards across their education landscapes?
Dare I state that our laws and policies pertaining to athletes are so dumbed-down, they have worked their ways into classrooms all across America. This is the reverse of rigor, a sort of “perverted incentive,” if you will. Even private schools are not removed from the cultural quagmire. This is an American problem. Teachers give passing grades to keep students eligible, parents use every excuse to pressure schools to come up with ways for athletes to remain eligible, including lying for them, finding online courses to remain eligible, threatening to go to the school board, and even retaining a lawyer. Our culture has so disconnected rightness and virtue that individualism encourages exploitation of loopholes that favors athletes over supposed requirements as students. To this I write, “Shame on any teacher who has given a grade unearned to an athlete just to bend to pressure.” Yet, teachers are living within the same culture that perpetuates this disconnect. Districts that expect more rigor from teachers, a more rigorous academic challenge for in-class students, yet cower from this same rigor toward athletes and competition, are themselves lacking rigor. The Common Core cannot change this culture, because the culture that allows students to be viewed as athletes first is polar opposite to Common Core, demonstrating the hypocrisy that what goes on in the classroom does not extend onto the playing surface.
Second, with our worship of athletics and laissez-faire attitude toward students’ attendance, and weak-district policies allowing for students to compete outside the classroom, it is clear that what goes on outside the classroom calls the shots for what goes on inside the classroom, in far too many corners of public education. Some eligibility rules are set by the state, while many others are set by districts. Attendance at school is not one of those policies that is taken seriously by either. If students are allowed to miss school regularly, have these absences excused by parents, or by themselves (if they are eighteen years of age), then how is this lack of rigor in attendance policy an extension of the rigor in the classroom?
We live in a culture that has little-to-no ethic, in terms of absence. Athletics is a privilege. However, the bottom-line is weeks and weeks of absences have no bearing on students being able to play for the schools they do not attend regularly. Students and parents know this and they exploit it. This is not just a secondary level concern; it is across our culture. It is across our culture because we have dumbed-down our accountability requirements for student attendance, placing athletics above academics. What would be wrong about students making up their academic deficiencies resulting from absence, before being allowed to compete? This is another major reason why Common Core will not succeed in American schools–students are not compelled to attend school regularly, while they are allowed an unearned privilege to compete and practice each day.
Students not required to attend schools for a specific number of hours per day, are still allowed to represent their school. There are exceptions, and I am fine with these exceptions, which I will leave for another post. However, exemptions are not the definition of culture.
Third, pandemic across the United States is this contrarian culture, counter to ramping up anything, except lawsuits if an athlete is not allowed to play. Parents have no qualms about fabricating stories to excuse their students from school, take weeks of vacation, yet expect the school to make certain there is no impact upon athletes’ playing time. This is a national cultural problem. I am in touch with literally dozens of educators across the nation at all levels, on a daily basis. I teach in a high school–my wife teaches elementary school. Anecdotes abound. I am certain you have your own.
Therefore, aside from the academic and educational issues presented by Common Core–and there are many–there are at least three ubiquitous cultural realities challenging Common Core at all levels within American society, each so deeply ingrained that it is immovable and provides foundational evidence undergirding every other piece of evidence that Common Core will never succeed in American Schools: (1) The disconnect between classroom attendance and earning the privilege of athletics participation, (2) Weak policy on academics which favors athletic eligibility over academic achievement and attendance, and (3) Lack of courage on the parts of state bureaucrats, school boards, and school staff to do what is right and face the current culture, which includes rigorous parental pressures.
Here is the link to my last two books. https://rowman.com/Action/Search/_/zarra/?term=zarra
The Education Grandpa 