Maggie's Farm

Stossel: Give parents some choice! Our kids' education should not be controlled by a monopoly

Hess: How the Common Core Went Wrong:

 By taking a promising idea and making a hash of things, advocates of the Common Core paid homage to a long tradition in American education. What could and should have happened in 2009 just might still be possible. It would offer the surest way out of what otherwise looks to be a bruising war of attrition that will complicate school improvement for years to come.

Although that original vision still offers a potential path forward, the odds of the necessary course correction actually taking place seem slight. Indeed, self-confident Common Core advocates have not been inclined to acknowledge missteps or problems and are instead more disposed to double down on clumsy political machinations, attempts to impugn skeptics, and an insistence that everything is working out just as they intended. At this point, however reasonable the rationale for the Common Core, it seems increasingly clear that American education would be better off if this unfortunate, quasi-national enterprise had never made it off the drawing board.