"To me the value is that it's obviously the right direction." Yes, but if all we're going on is "hope" and "politics", then we have absolutely no way of knowin

"To me the value is that it's obviously the right direction." Yes, but if all we're going on is "hope" and "politics", then we have absolutely no way of knowing if it's the right direction as you say. As the other poster mentioned, they could have easily done some studies of common core before throwing it at the wall to see if it sticks. Change is never good if it's for its own sake. It may be intuitive for us to think that "mechanical learning" isn't the right approach to solving literacy in subject X, but we could very well be entirely wrong. The point I was trying to draw upon was the parent's initial comment about "let's do Y, and hope it works". Hoping is absolutely no substitute for hard research with tests and controls.