Common Floor?

Upscale Douglas County, Colorado’s school district has a remarkably outspoken superintendent named Liz Celania-Fagen.

To put it mildly, Ms. Celania-Fagen isn’t impressed with the Common Core State Standards, which she calls “Common Floor.”

A recent National Review On Line article reports:

“Celania-Fagen thinks the controversial Common Core standards were written ‘with good intentions to help a lot of [low] performing states and districts,’ but are a poor fit for high-performing systems like Douglas County.”

The article goes on to say:

“Douglas County has created its own set of standards and assessments, organizing hundreds of teachers to review the Common Core and Colorado Academic Standards with an eye, says Celania-Fagen, towards crafting something more ‘cognitively demanding.’”

While Kentucky’s education leaders may not want to admit that Common Core sets out only an incomplete floor, educators in at least one Denver suburb are not caught up in such denial.

So much for Common Core aiming at high standards for all. Kentuckians need to understand that really high performing school systems are already planning to ignore and go well beyond Common Core. So, if our kids really are going to be able to compete, they also will need “more than core.”