Common Core Crash Course

In case you are wondering, as many are, what the heck is this Common Core stuff anyway, here are some links to blogs with a crash course in their history, and what is not right with them.

A lot of the confusion is due to the Common Core State Standards organization itself, which has inaccurate information on their website. Much confusion is due to really bad curriculum labeled as Common Core – which is simply bad curriculum and doesn’t have much if anything to do with the new standards. But there is now a new kind of bad curriculum, which mindlessly follows the Standards, clause by clause, as if you can teach grammar one day and comprehension the next.

Recently too there has been confusing criticism, coming from the Tea Party and far-right political groups, of the Common Core State Standards, and the Obama administration’s education program, not only for federal overreach (which is, indeed, one of the biggest problems with the current federal education policy), but also for what used to be called Secular Humanism in curriculum. Their issue is that public schools teach kids that our country is not perfect, that the world was not created 6000 years ago, and that Muslims and gay people are ok. This has nothing to do with the Common Core State Standards.

There is also confusion from radio and magazine pieces labeling good classroom practice as Common Core, when in fact it has nothing to do with it.

Here’s an article about the NPR (National Public Radio) problem with covering Common Core: http://www.current.org/2014/09/gates-funding-spurs-doubts-over-pubmedias-impartiality-in-education-reporting/

I had wondered, about some articles I heard on NPR that made no sense – where what teachers were doing and said they liked about the Common Core, are not actually in the Standards. You should definitely take a look at the Standards themselves.

I heard a story recently about how Bill Gates was having similar problems with his work in Africa, where they are starting to learn that you don’t swoop in from above and fix things. You need to talk to people on the ground, find out what the problem is, work with others.

This is a good story, about the Gates involvement: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

But here is what I think is the best summary I have seen of the problems with the Common Core State Standards: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/17/four-common-core-flimflams/

Even though Alaska did not adopt the Common Core State Standards, we actually did. Look at the Alaska State Standards and the Common Core side by side. That was one interesting thing Alaska State Rep. Reinbold had in her recent slide show – the certification from our Commissioner of Education to federal DOE, certifying that the Alaska Standards are “virtually identical” to Common Core – which they had to be to get a waiver from No Child Left Behind.

One more article, a speech by Diane Ravitch, who rocks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/

And, my Common Core essay.

Sitka’s district leadership is gung ho on Common Core/Alaska State Standards, as are I bet most administrators around the country. As far as teachers, you’ll find a range of opinions, from being profoundly insulted, to eager for guidance. A big problem is that the Standards are very poorly written and hard to interpret, which causes stress when teachers are being judged by how well they get the kids to pass the tests based on them.

The premise of the Common Core is seductive, to administrators, politicians, and even some teachers – the notion that all you need is a list, you teach everything on the list, you’re good to go. Unfortunately, learning doesn’t work that way. Teaching is an art.

I got to see the Houghton Mifflin program for middle school (Sitka schools are looking at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on new “Common Core Aligned” textbooks). They reduce English to mindless test practice. The entirety of the workbook for the year consists of “close reading,” which, as in the Common Core, means taking a short, mediocre piece of writing, and finding particular sentences and words in it. Far from requiring analysis or critical thinking, it requires no thinking at all.

But as for the tests, one teacher told me she saw sample questions and it made her cry, knowing her lower-ability kids would not be able to do it. Bad as the standards are, the real crime is that they were written as a template for practicing for new, harder tests.

The CCSS are poorly written, hard to interpret, and students (schools, and teachers) will be judged on the tests based on them, so there’s more confusion and fear than anything. That is probably why one English teacher is actually WANTING a curriculum that will hit all the Standards, as a safety net. That’s my sense, also, with the District.

Tonight I heard that some teachers are saying they won’t be teaching anything not in the standards. This is really short changing their students.

So it’s a big, old, entrenched problem – the federal requirements for testing (driving the frenzy for curriculum that will prepare students for the tests) are top-down and have nothing to do with improving schools. Our schools are pretty good, and potentially could be even better. Common Core and all the testing is so expensive, not transparent, and so obviously stupid, that this paradoxically might mark a change in the tide, and we can get back to pursuing excellence in education, by doing things we know work – instead of spending millions on things that do not, and in fact diminish the quality of our schools.