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# Problems With Distinctions and Perspectives Impairing the Debate on Common Core

## Details

**Authors** Fiduccia P

**Year** 2017

**Publisher** Cornell Policy Review

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Education

**Kind of engagement** applications

[Read it](https://www.cornellpolicyreview.com/problems-distinctions-perspectives-impairing-debate-common-core/)

## In authors' words

### Abstract

[No abstract published; opening paragraphs retrieved verbatim] Introduced in 2009, the Common Core State Standards Initiative (Common Core, Core, or CC) is the most recent and most broad-scale attempt to create national standards for primary and secondary school students in the United States. The plan was chartered by the National Governor's Association's (NGA) Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) with the goal of creating a framework that, beginning in kindergarten, effectively outlined levels of college and career readiness for students at the end of high school. Not soon after its inception, varying groups of individuals - from politicians to foundation analysts - began criticizing and lauding the Common Core's purpose and methodologies. Among the more frequently heard arguments against the Common Core is that it is prescriptive: opponents state that it mandates which specific books or mathematics lessons educators must use. This charge is factually incorrect, as the CC only makes recommendations and suggestions, not mandates, for curricula. Another point of opposition is that, theoretically, the CC provides a "level playing field" for all students, in the pursuit of which it creates a linear, by-the-numbers style of education that pigeonholes educators into a narrow range of resource options (such as textbooks or curricula). These differences in perspective between opponents and proponents of the Common Core seem easy to identify, so why does it seem we can't have any kind of meaningful national dialogue about the Core? Because the problem of varying perspectives transcends the perspectives themselves and results in parties' assigning different meanings to the same distinction; a proponent may assign a meaning to CC math standards as 'structured,' where opponents may assign a meaning of 'restrictive' to the same distinction.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

A Cornell Policy Review piece on why the national debate over the Common Core stalls, read through the DSRP lenses of distinctions and perspectives.

### What they found (results)

The problem transcends differing perspectives: the parties assign different meanings to the same distinction — "structured" to one side is "restrictive" to the other — which blocks meaningful national dialogue.

## Commentary

### In short

A student application of DSRP, from the Cornell Policy Review systems thinking special issues.

**Patterns it shows** D, P

**How to cite this** Fiduccia P (2017). Problems With Distinctions and Perspectives Impairing the Debate on Common Core. Cornell Policy Review.