Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, and Alan A. Aja, assistant professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College (City University of New York) here explore and explode the claims that the Common Core Standards will promote equity for the most disadvantaged students. The assertion is often made that these standards, because they are common and because they are rigorous, will lead to higher performance by all students. The theory is that students will learn more and try harder if the standards are made “harder.”

What Burris and Aja show is that the Common Core testing to date has widened the achievement gap between haves and have nots.

They write:

In New York for example, one of the first states to roll out the new curriculum, scores from Common Core tests dropped like a stone—and the achievement gaps dramatically widened…