The Core Knowledge Blog

by Andrew Wolf

… Some years back, the reporting of the results of the common standardized tests was altered, not to show the average achievement of students in a school or a district, but to determine the percentage achieving or exceeding something called “grade level,” a measure of minimal competence. By this gauge, the child who is barely getting by, meeting this minimal standard counts equally with the super-star prodigy pondering quantum physics.

… Is it any wonder that instruction has been dumbed down in American schools, when educrats are rewarded and honored not for bringing more children to the top, but for nudging more over some contrived midpoint of mediocrity?

… Math is not the only area impacted by this “march to the middle.” Content area instruction has carefully been removed from American classrooms, a phenomenon that a University of Virginia professor named E.D. Hirsch Jr. noticed decades ago. Mr. Hirsch has come up with a real-world solution — a content-rich back-to-basics curriculum called Core Knowledge that is winning favor with schools and parents across the country.

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