Is DeVos' claim that Common Core is dead true?

An education analyst at a conservative Washington think tank believes that the Education Secretary's declaration that the Common Core is dead was premature.

During her speech to the American Enterprise Institute, United States Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a bold declaration.

"[A]t the U.S. Department of Education, [the] Common Core is dead," she assured.

However, American Principles Project (APP) Senior Fellow Jane Robbins points out that most states have their own versions of the Common Core and assures that they are afraid to get rid of them.

"And the primary reason they have it is that they're afraid if they get rid of it. and they replace it with some actual good standards, that that won't be considered good enough for their state plans for the mandates under ESSA – the federal law," APP's Robbins argued.

ESSA – which stands for the Every Student Succeeds Act – was passed last year, leaving much more control over education to the states. But Robbins maintains that it also promotes digital learning – something DeVos loudly applauds.

"That is the really concerning part of all of this – that she is a big proponent of digital learning, as is memorialized in ESSA,” Robbins asserted. “It has all sorts of grant programs and all kinds of encouragements for states to go in that direction of replacing teachers with machines."

Robbins says that research is coming out now indicating that digital learning is not having a good effect on academic achievement and, in fact, may be having a negative effect.