Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core

By Tom Loveless

Recommended on: 10th January 2024

Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core, by Tom Loveless. Now that we’re largely back on track after the epidemic-related school shutdowns, it’s a good time to also get back on track in what’s going on more generally with education.  In his insightful book Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core, Tom Loveless provides a compelling analysis of the complex forces that shape education policy and reform in the United States. He explores the history of standards-based education reform, with a particular focus on the rollout and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). 

What’s particularly enjoyable about this book is that Loveless writes so clearly. (Not like a typical academic!) Loveless also doesn’t take obvious sides in the progressive versus traditional debates—ultimately, that battle is extraneous to whether programs like Common Core work, and are worth the enormous cost and pedagogical upheaval. Loveless himself has led major studies in this area.  Ultimately, it seems part of the challenge with Common Core is that it was developed largely behind closed doors, with virtually no input or feedback from boots-on-the-ground teachers. This seems an obvious misstep—yet perhaps surprisingly, part of the reason for the failure of earlier standards was their very openness and transparency. 

Between the State and the Schoolhouse is an illuminating guide to the complex machinery behind education reform movements. Anyone interested in going beyond surface-level debates to truly understand the forces shaping America’s schools would do well to read this important and engagingly written work.

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