Nicholas Tampio, Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, visited the hill in late February to deliver a lecture in critique of the American Common Core standards. Tampio was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hamilton in the Government Department from 2005 to 2008. He said he was grateful for the invitation to come back and for this opportunity, as he could use it as practice for his upcoming debate on Common Core, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.

Tampio’s most recent books, Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy and Learning versus the Common Core, investigates and analyzes the Common Core’s influence on American democracy and educational systems.

Tampio began the lecture by defining what Common Core is. According to the Common Core website, the entity is “a set of clear college and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.” These educational standards are “the learning goals for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level.”

The Common Core is important because it affects, and is the basis, for curriculum, testing, education, and much more. If the Common Core standards are bad, all these realms are negatively impacted.

Before presenting his own critique, Tampio explained the support for national education standards present on both sides of the political spectrum. For example, civil rights groups on the left favor the standards because they believe the standards foster educational equality in regards to economics and race. On the right, business groups favor the standards believing them to make students more economically competitive.

Tampio’s criticism of the Common Core draws on ideas from philosophers such as James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Dewey in particular. Tampio contends that the Madisonian, Tocquevillian and Dewey’s warnings have come true; some factions have been oppressed, parents have been alienated from the schools, and oligarchs use standardization to control schools and take away autonomy from the teachers and students.

In addition to these warnings, Tampio’s main critiques include that the Common Core nationalizes a pedagogy based on regurgitation, emphasizes computer testable skills, the standards do not permit students to go at their own pace, and Common Core prepares children for the economy, not democracy.

There are real problems with education in the United States, but the Common Core is not fixing them, according to Tampio, who believes alternatives can be devised. Tampio pointed out the hypocrisy of the creators of the standards, as they send their children to schools that do not use the Common Core. In order to fix the issues surrounding education and the Common Core, we should first listen to educators, parents, and students. Second, we should look at the standards, and if the critiques are accurate and the standards are the problem, then we should draw upon political theory and educational philosophy to propose remedies.

Tampio believes in plural standards and champions the notion of federalism. The U.S. should allow for “low-level civil war.” Localities should battle out these issues for themselves. Spaces of freedom are shrinking in the educational system. While teachers are allowed to devise their own curriculum under the Common Core, they can only depart slightly from the “script,” as they have to “teach to the test” to ensure their students do well and their school receives funding. Classrooms should foster the individuality and interests of each student, not try to fit them all into one mold.

Tampio utilized Dewey’s following quote to explain how standards should be decided on and how reform should occur: “The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.” Tampio in accordance with Dewey acknowledges that there is some role for experts, but the people who are actually participants in the educational system (the ones wearing the shoe) should be asked how they are being affected. Tampio further noted, by citing credible polls, that support for the Common Core is eroding among teachers, parents, and students, showing that the public does not believe the Common Core (the shoe) adequately fits.

The weak point of Tampio’s argument, as he admitted, is that if you allow for freedom, then people can abuse this freedom. Federal and local control are both dangerous, but right now, the bigger issue and threat to freedom is the federal government. Tampio sees a plurality of locally decided standards as a better alternative to the anti-Deweyan pedagogy perpetuated by the Common Core.

Tampio maintains that the Common Core and national education standards are top-down policies controlled by economic elites, and the standards do not resolve economic injustice or racism. Instead, Tampio advocates for local education control, with more autonomy for students and teachers, more adaptation in education, and a more pragmatic approach focusing on what works for a given community at a given time.