BROOKLINE, Mass. – There’s a saying in politics that you can’t beat something with nothing.

That’s an apt warning for opponents of the Common Core experiment who have spent the past several years denouncing the one-size-fits-all K-12 learning standards, but who’ve failed to offer an alternative plan for improving America’s struggling public education system.

As Common Core’s deficiencies become more and more obvious, supporters of the nationalized standards still argue they hold the moral high ground in the debate because they’re at least trying to make America’s public schools better and more competitive.

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Common Core critics, they contend, are reactionaries who, by yelling “No!” to the standards, are really saying “Yes!” to the dismal status quo.

Former University of Arkansas professor and well-regarded education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky has a solution for Core critics in a new op-ed for Breitbart.com.

According to Stotsky, the only way Americans are ever going to see substantive improvements in their schools is by improving the quality of the adults who are leading those schools and classrooms.

Stotsky points to a 2007 McKinsey report that revealed “most elementary teachers in the U.S. come from the bottom third of their college cohort.” In other words, many of the best and the brightest college students aren’t becoming teachers.

Having “under-qualified” educators and administrators is a major concern because they’re the ones who shape the curriculum – along with the social justice-obsessed leftists who write and publish a large portion of the instructional materials available to teachers.

Simply put, if the “inputs” (teachers, administrators, teacher colleges) into America’s K-12 schools aren’t first-rate, there’s no way the “outputs” (student learning) will be.

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To correct this glaring problem, Stotsky recommends that individual states – not the federal government – raise the bar for admission into teacher prep programs.

“In such high-achieving countries as Singapore, South Korea, and Finland, admission to a teacher-training program is highly competitive,” Stotsky writes. “Only students in the top 10-20 percent of their high school or college cohort are admitted to an elementary or secondary training program.”

She recommends similar high standards for college programs that train the next generation of school administrators – a group that includes principals, curriculum directors, and superintendents.

Specifically, Stotsky recommends that individuals have a Master of Arts or Science degree in a subject taught in K-12 before being allowed into school leadership programs. Her rationale is simple: By ensuring that future school leaders know an academic subject top-to-bottom, they’ll be much better equipped to sort through the scads of education research – much of which is poorly designed and flat-out unscientific – and ferret out the best practices that can actually improve student achievement.

Stotsky, who offers a total of seven recommendations in her op-ed, concludes:

“Suggestions here are based on a credible body of research evidence showing a relationship between academically stronger teachers and higher student achievement. An academically stronger corps of educators is more likely to establish and teach an academically stronger curriculum, do better designed research, and make more soundly based educational policy. Yet, our educational leadership is in a state of denial.

“Our educational leadership seems incapable of taking the obvious step that other countries have taken as a matter of common sense—restricting admission to a teacher preparation program to the top 10-15 percent of the cohort graduating from a regular high school (for admission to an undergraduate education program) or to the top 10-15 percent of those graduating from college (for admission to a post-baccalaureate education program). True reform demands it.”

Stotsky’s recommendations tower above Common Core supporters’ lame effort to make virtually all students “college-ready” by dumbing down the learning standards – with generic, content-light skills in the English language arts and less overall math instruction.

It’s truly wonderful that so many Americans are rising up against the Common Core experiment. But if they want to affect serious change, killing the nationalized standards isn’t enough. Core opponents need to also offer an alternative vision for fixing our schools.

Stotsky’s plan certainly meets that criteria.