EnergyFactor By ExxonMobil | Pespectives has a new home

Common Core State Standards = education risk management

It’s been 30 years since a landmark report from a blue-ribbon panel on education warned that the United States was A Nation at Risk.

Three decades later, our nation still faces a crisis in education.

Consider the fact that only 35 percent of eighth graders perform at grade level or above in math, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. Just as disturbing is that, when compared to international peers, the U.S. seems to be falling behind.  According to the Program for International Assessment, U.S. students rank 14th in the world in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

As ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson notes in today’s Wall Street Journal, the trend line is moving in the wrong direction. This decline helps explain why hundreds of thousands of American jobs remain vacant today, even in the face of high unemployment. The problem is that there are not enough applicants with adequate skills in science, technology, engineering and math.

Fortunately, as Rex points out, there is a tool available to reverse this trend: the Common Core State Standards.

These are voluntary, state-driven standards that establish the expectations for knowledge and skills that students from kindergarten to 12th grade should master for college and career readiness.

The key to the Common Core is the flexibility these standards afford to educators and administrators.

“The standards stipulate what we want all students to know and be able to do,” Rex writes. “But each state retains the explicit authority to determine how it teaches its students. The standards are a tool to help educators, not a straitjacket for them.”

It was for such reasons that two leading authorities on education, Joel Klein and Sol Stern, recently called the Common Core State Standards “one of the most promising education initiatives of the last half century.”

Rex often describes his job at ExxonMobil as one focusing largely on risk management. As we contemplate A Nation at Risk at age 30, it is clear there is an ongoing threat to America’s future as a land of opportunity and leadership.  With the Common Core State Standards, we can take a step forward in addressing this challenge and build a nation of high expectations and improved education outcomes for every student.


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