Can the Common Core Counter Educational Inequity?: International Legal Lessons on Closing the Achievement Gap

Abstract

Thirty years have passed since the Reagan Administration’s release of the Report to the Nation.2 Yet, despite its depiction of the status of the American educational system, it came as a shock to many when the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reaffirmed our “rising tide of mediocrity.”3 For the 2009 PISA, “the United States perform[ed] around the average in reading (rank 14) and science (rank 17) and below the average in mathematics (rank 25)” out of the thirty-four Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.4 The 2012 PISA results worsened as U.S. rankings fell to seventeenth in reading, twenty-first in science, and twenty-sixth in