New forms of labeling students like Common Core, don’t change the underlying assumption:
In education, as in society, holding individuals accountable for their actions is a powerful paradigm within a meritocracy. If all is equitable, then human choices and behaviors are more easily assigned in a causational way to individuals. Political and public discourse as well as social and education policy work within an accountability paradigm based on the assumption that the U.S. is a meritocracy.
And therein lies fundamental errors in claims about equity in the U.S.: Accountability without meritocracy is not only flawed but a mechanism for entrenching inequity.
Education reform, then, must reject the accountability paradigm, and then embrace an equity paradigm as a reform strategy seeking the possibility of achieving a meritocracy.
Common Core isn’t a paradigm shift. It’s a marketing shift, so that teachers will stop complaining.
If we want our students to be critical creators, we too have to analyze what’s being marketed as “good” teaching.