Most machines are easier to understand when you can see who built them, how the parts fit together and what the finished product is supposed to accomplish.
Education reform should not be any different.
Building the Machine is a documentary about the Common Core State Standards Initiative, one of the largest changes to American public education in recent history.
The standards began as a collaboration between the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. By 2010, most states had adopted them in English language arts and mathematics.
Despite that reach, many Americans still knew very little about Common Core or how it might change their children’s education.
That is where Building the Machine enters the conversation.
The documentary examines how Common Core developed, who participated in the process and what the standards may mean for schools, teachers and students.
It also includes interviews with education experts, including members of the Common Core Validation Committee.
Building the Machine comes from the Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization that has raised concerns about Common Core and its potential effects on educational freedom.
Standards, Curriculum and Control
One source of confusion is the word “standards.”
Standards describe what students are expected to know at particular grade levels. They are not technically the same thing as curriculum, which determines the books, lessons and methods teachers use to reach those expectations.
However, standards can influence curriculum, testing, teacher evaluations and the products school systems purchase.
That is why the debate cannot end with someone saying, “They are only standards.”
It also should not end with someone declaring that any shared standard automatically amounts to federal control.
The more useful questions involve authority and accountability.
Who wrote the standards? Who reviewed them? How did states evaluate them before adoption? How much freedom will local schools retain? What happens when a standard works well in theory but poorly in a classroom?
Parents who support Common Core should be able to answer them. Parents who oppose it should be willing to examine answers that complicate their objections.
Too often, the debate gets reduced to two opposing teams.
One side becomes the team that cares about high standards. The other becomes the team that cares about local control.
Apparently, no one is allowed to care about both.
Education policy deserves more thought than that.
A national conversation about what students should learn is reasonable. So is concern about implementing sweeping changes before parents and teachers fully understand them.
Consistency can help students who move between states. It can also create problems when uniform expectations ignore meaningful differences among children, classrooms and communities.
Neither possibility should be dismissed merely because the wrong political team mentioned it first.
Building the Machine does not need to provide the final word on Common Core to serve a useful purpose.
It only needs to help viewers ask better questions.
Watch the full trailer below, then examine the Common Core State Standards Initiative for yourself.