I’ll be honest, I’m a bit on the fence about the Common Core still, though I think I’m increasingly leaning towards “bad idea.” In any case, this editorial makes a pretty compelling case against it. This jumped out at me, though:

By any measure, NCLB was a dismal failure in both raising academic performance and narrowing gaps in opportunity and outcomes. But by very publicly measuring the test results against benchmarks no real schools have ever met, NCLB did succeed in creating a narrative of failure that shaped a decade of attempts to ‘fix’ schools while blaming those who work in them. By the time the first decade of NCLB was over, more than half the schools in the nation were on the lists of ‘failing schools’ and the rest were poised to follow.

It’s worth noting that, while the intention may not have been to paint schools as failing, both NCLB and RTTT have basically cemented the idea that our schools are failing and in need of drastic upheaval, something I’m not really convinced of.