The Impetus Behind Common Core--One Man's View

Jim Milgram, the Stanford professor who was the primary author of California's 1997 math standards, sent the following email to a list of which I am a member, and gave me permission to quote it here with attribution:

I wish you were right, but here in California, Ze'ev Wurman's work shows that the 12 years of reasonable standards and state enforcement actually did reduce the achievement gap and in the right way. Scores for "minority" groups went up significantly, while scores for others were roughly unchanged.

As you know, I was on the Common Core Validation Committee, so I had a first row seat to what was happening. You should have seen the sudden increase among the math educators involved -- when Ze'ev's results first appeared -- in their desire to get rid of the CA standards.

I had a long argument with the most well known among them. I focused on explaining our results in eighth grade algebra which had shown a very high percentage of those minority kids passing the course and scoring pretty well on the state exam.

The more they understood what was going on, the more determined they became. I recall that when I mentioned that fully 2/3 of the CA students were taking eighth grade algebra, one of them said that's horrible, and the others agreed. That's when I realized I wasn't speaking the same language they were, I had to get out, and I finally felt I had to report to Governor Schwarzenegger's office that CA should not get involved with Common Core. Unfortunately, the Race to the Top money had already been announced, and CA was desperate for funds. So it was too late. He tried to keep eighth grade algebra, but it only took Jerry Brown and Mike Kirst one or two years to get rid of it.

Jim

He has had more direct experience in this than I have, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity.