If Seattle teachers boycott Common Core standardized tests next fall, as some have promised, looks like they'll have the support of one prominent, charming celebrity comedian (with 3.3. million Twitter followers). Last week, C.K. went on a social media tear against the tests, then piled on in an appearance on Letterman:
My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
A huge amount of my third graders time is spent preparing for and answering questions like this. pic.twitter.com/WU5tEo8JRO
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
If you really want to understand the case against Common Core, read education historian Dianne Ravitch's smackdown of a subsequent Newsweek hit job on C.K.:
Are our kids left behind by China, South Korea and Germany? Not really. Maybe not at all. It is true that we get mediocre scores on international tests, but we have been getting mediocre scores on international tests since the first such test was offered in 1964. We were never a world leader on the international tests. Most years, our scores were at the median or even in the bottom quartile. Yet in the intervening fifty years, we have far surpassed all those nations–economically, technologically, and on every other dimension– whose students got higher test scores. Basically, the test scores don’t predict anything about the future of the economy. Should we worry that Estonia might surpass us?Go read the whole thing.