The following is a critique on the principles embodied in the Common Core national education standards currently being implemented in the United States. There are fundamental problems with the stated goals so one can only assume there is more going on here than we are being told. I think the parents of our current school children feel this “issue” and that is why there is so much opposition developing to the program.

The following is generally accepted as true:

.1% of the population has an IQ of 55 or less

2.1% of the population has an IQ of between 55 and 70

13.6% of the population has an IQ of between 70 and 85

34.1% of the population has an IQ of between 85 and 100

34.1% of the population has an IQ of between 100 and 115

13.6% of the population has an IQ of between 115 and 130

2.1% of the population has an IQ of between 130 and 145

.1% of the population has an IQ of over 145

To get into college and presumed graduate it was understood in the 50’ and 60’s that you would need a minimum IQ of 115; preferably over 120. Based on the accepted IQ distribution that would indicate that only 15.8% of the population could be college ready and of that group probably less than half would graduate for various reasons. The following short paragraphs contain statistics and numbers to show a problem, the actual numbers and percentages will be slightly different than those presented here but the principles presented will hold.

The corollary of that would be that 68.2% of the population would have to find work that would not require college but could be high school graduates. An additional 13.6% could find work but would not graduate from high school. The rest 2.2% would be dependent on others for there well being.

The stated goal of Common Core is to make every high school graduate college ready and the corollary would be, all who would go to college would graduate, otherwise why would anyone go to college. The problem with Common Core is there are only two ways to even come close to achieving the stated gold of all high school graduates being college ready.

The first is that 84.0% of the population could not graduate from high school.

The other way is that the minimum IQ to enter college would have to be lowered to say 100 which would mean that 50% of the population could go to college but only say 8% of the population would graduate. The corollary of that would be that 50.0% of the population would not graduate from high school.

Other combinations are, of course, possible but only 8 to 10% of the population can actually graduate from college unless we lower the standards to graduate from college from what they were in the 50’s and the 60’s

I wrote my undergrad thesis in economics on this very subject in 1965 and I did get an A on it so my professor did not disagree with the conclusions; although I must say that the thesis was written as a academic paper and approached from a slightly different angle, that being that as a technology based society developed jobs would have to be found for those that would not have the mental ability to work in technical fields.