Apparently taking their cue from right wing talk radio and Fox News pundits, leaders of the North Carolina Legislature have begun an assault on the Common Core Standards for education. Some want to repeal the standards which our school systems have been working to implement since they were adopted in 2010 by you know who – the North Carolina Legislature.

What better way to finish demoralizing underpaid and underappreciated educators than to give them the monumental job of organizing to achieve specific goals and then, at the last minute, repeal the goals? The Republicans in charge at the legislature often argue that government should be more efficient and productive, like a successful business. Today it is those legislators, not the educators who need lessons in successful business practices. The idea that we can greatly improve (or damage) education by adopting a set of standards is foolishness. It is the actions taken to achieve the goals that will make a difference. As Russell Ackoff, a renowned professor from the Wharton School of Business put it, “The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers with simple problems are those with simple minds.”

For many years we have known that the educational achievement of American students is lagging behind the achievement of students in many other developed nations. Since public education is largely a responsibility of states, not the federal government, the National Governor’s Association commissioned a project to study the situation and make recommendations. It was strongly supported by governors from both parties and the funding was mostly from the private sector – especially from businesses and foundations which were concerned that American graduates were not prepared for the jobs of the future (or even the present).   Educators, psychologists, business leaders and other qualified people worked for years to produce the Common Core Standards which were then adopted voluntarily by 46 states. Only after this was done did the federal government begin to use the standards too.

The Common Core Standards specify very little about curriculum (books, teaching techniques etc.) In fact, the standards anticipate that there will be variance across the country in that regard, and that there may be variance from one classroom to another based the unique styles of individual teachers or the needs of students. If there is to be standardization of curriculum or teaching techniques, it would be done by states or school districts.

How should those of us who are not educators think of the standards? I see them as mileposts for each student to pass on the journey of preparation for successful employment after high school or for college. That was also the goal of the National Governor’s Association and of the private organizations that paid for much of the research on which the standards are based.

One state, Kentucky, has led the way in implementing the standards and more recently they have begun testing to measure how they are doing. The bad news is that their educational performance still lags behind other nations. The very promising news is that in two years their test scores rose 2 percent while their high school graduation rate rose 6 percent. It is too soon to attribute that progress to the common core standards but certainly they can take pride in the achievement.

Edward Deming, who is often credited with introducing scientific process improvement as a business practice, said “Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do.” It is vital for legislators to understand that. The Common Core Standards provide a yardstick with which we can measure progress. They should be used for planning and improvement, not for appraisal of individual performance.   Repealing them will leave educators no generally accepted and standardized measurement and will take away their ability to compare results from various school districts and teaching methods – leaving us in a situation where policy changes will be based on opinion rather than data. Replacing them with state standards will take away our ability to compare our results with other states and will present new opportunities for politicians to insert their personal biases into educational policy. That is the opposite of good business practices.

Rather than taking the goalposts off the field, the legislature can be most helpful by doing its own job – not the jobs of the educators. There is massive evidence that children, especially low income children, do best in nations that provide high quality public pre-schools. The legislature should study how best to create and fund that service. Many legislators (in both parties) want performance-based pay for educators. If that is the case, legislators and school boards must provide management education for whoever will do the performance appraisals and the ongoing communication and coaching throughout the year. Successful performance appraisals don’t surprise people – they are merely summaries of discussions that have been ongoing. They are based on multiple job expectations, not on the results of a single test.

The most critical factor in business success is hiring the right people. That means that we need to provide adequate salaries. We have some great teachers who are terribly underpaid. We have lost some great teachers who had to leave their chosen profession in order to adequately support their families. The legislature can help by funding salaries comparable to professions requiring similar levels of education, skill and stress.

So, legislature, what’s it going to be? Will you choose a businesslike approach to improving quality or more tampering based on the opinions of talk show hosts?