What We Do

We believe that a child who graduates from high school without an understanding of culture, the arts, history, literature, civics, and language has in fact been left behind. So to improve education in America, we’re promoting programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences.

WE PROMOTE A FULL CORE CURRICULUM. The No Child Left Behind Act has increased the amount of time schools devote to basic reading and math skills, squeezing core subjects out of the classroom. Because schools are sacrificing the subjects that open students’ minds and teach them to think critically and imaginatively about the world, we’re working to restore teaching of core academic disciplines. Only a complete liberal arts education will enable today’s students to become tomorrow’s well-prepared citizens.

INFORMATION FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS, LEGISLATORS, and anyone who wants to promote liberal learning in our schools. Common Core is a source for quality education standards, programs, and curricula. We’re also the place to find data on why a comprehensive education in the liberal arts and sciences is important, and on the status of liberal education today. Our first report, Still at Risk, showed how little our 17-year-olds know about history and literature.

June 2, 2009 • Common Core releases Why We’re Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don’t, a report showing that the nations that consistently outrank us on international comparison tests provide their students with a fulsome education in the liberal arts and sciences. Why is this news? Because the U.S. is moving further and further away from this model. Read brief excerpts from the documents featured in the report here and Education Week’s take here.

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Want to learn more about our recent panel questioning the tenets of the 21st century skills movement? See what NYU historian Diane Ravitch, Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham, and Partnership for 21st Century Skills president Ken Kay have to say in this brief, seven-minute video.

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Watch the entire panel discussion (approximately 2 hours). To view the video in full screen mode, click on the full screen icon in the video menu bar. And read coverage of the panel in USA Today and Education Week. The full text of panelists' presentations can be found here.

Common Core's report shows a nation STILL AT RISK. Nearly a quarter of students polled could not identify Adolf Hitler and half had no idea what the Renaissance was. To learn more read the report, press release or stories at ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, and USA TODAY. Or take the test yourself.

Read Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

"Anybody who has sat in on curriculum meetings and projects in the humanities has experienced those awkward moments when it comes down to selecting certain contents and materials as essential and required. Traditionalists in the room want to identify core texts, events, figures, and ideas, and on various grounds of historical influence, civic inheritance, and aesthetic virtue they stick with a generally Eurocentric tradition."

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