Common Core: "Better Than You've Heard"?

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A rather goofy video titled “Common Core: It’s Better Than You’ve Heard” (perhaps not the greatest marketing slogan ever conceived; it reminded several internet commenters of the quip “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds,” often attributed to Mark Twain) has been circulating widely online this past week or so. It has irked a lot of people who are against the implementation of the Common Core State Standards… as well as a lot of people who are supporters of the standards.

Such unity between the sides in this often-contentious debate is evidence of how troublesome the debate has become – people who share political affiliations, come from similar types of schools (public, private, charter; urban, suburban, rural; struggling, surviving, thriving), and sincerely want all of our schools to succeed, still fundamentally disagree with one another. At least, they are pretty sure that they do – the debate has gotten complicated, often generating much more heat than light.

Dueling op-eds are being published almost daily – two recent examples are a (mostly) anti-CC contribution to the Washington Post’s Answersheet blog by Thomas Scarice, superintendent of Connecticut’s Madison Public Schools; and a (mostly) pro-CC piece in the Wall Street Journal by William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education for President Ronald Reagan.

At the heart of both of these arguments, there seems to be quite a lot of room for agreement: the problem, both writers suggest, is not the vision, but the implementation. Scarice argues that the standards won’t work in the current high-stakes testing environment, not that the standards themselves are terrible; Bennett, similarly, likes the theory of the standards but not the practice thus far.

A recent debate (full video at the link) held by Intelligence Squared in New York City (motion: “Embrace the Common Core”) featured four stakeholders in this debate – only one of whom, notably, is currently a working educator – with two unlikely allies on each side.

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Arguing in favor of the standards were Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Fordham Institute; and Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President at the Center for American Progress and former Obama administration Assistant Secretary of Education. Arguing against were Carol Burris, principal of South Shore High School, Long Island, NY; and Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.

The question of how the standards impact high-achieving students came up early and often, beginning with Petrilli’s assertion that the focus of past school reforms has been on the “kids at the bottom” and that Common Core represents an attempt to address the students at the top of the class as well.

Martin told a story about a student who was in honors courses at her high school and received a full scholarship to a public university, but found herself completely unprepared for her coursework. She lost her scholarship and had to fill the gap with student loans in order to return for her sophomore year – a challenge which, Martin pointed out, would have led many less-motivated students to drop out. The standards, she said, are to help ensure that students like this one are “getting their money’s worth” from their educations.

Hess offered his objection to the fact that the CC math standards no longer include trigonometry or pre-calculus, and reminded the audience that states can still adjust their cut scores on standardized tests independently to show more students passing.

Near the end of the debate, conversation veered into the question of what should be done if the motion was not accepted; if “embracing the Common Core” was deemed not a worthy goal.

Hess and Burris agreed that the federal government should remove itself from the equation, with Hess offering that ”states that are ready should proceed” and Burris stating that the states could “clean up” the standards on their own, based on their needs. “If we all do things the same way, where will the new ideas come from?” she added.

Petrilli cited the costs – in both morale and finances – of yet another dramatic shift in education policy, and Martin revisited her argument that students like the one she mentioned earlier need higher standards to prepare them for college-level work.

Response to the debate was, of course, mixed, though many people stated they enjoyed the relative civility and good humor, compared to many other related discussions. The pro-CC side won in the end-of-debate vote.

But where does yet another debate, and more and more op-ed articles, leave classroom teachers working with these standards?

Some teachers embrace the standards as ways to reconsider and improve classroom instruction given the multiple-path, technology-oriented careers their students will likely develop. Others worry about the “what gets measured, gets done” ethos that has become so pervasive in education in this era of high-stakes testing, and the possibility of curricula becoming ever more narrow and uninspiring as a result. One teacher commented: “It’s like we all sat around and said, ‘We have to do something! Common Core is something! Therefore, we must do Common Core!’”

Many teachers are, of course, able to see both sides of the argument, and simply want opportunities for collaboration and partnership-building as they try to find the “right answers” for their students.

Where do you fall on the “CC spectrum”? What has shaped your experience with the standards thus far, and how do you see them impacting your STEM students’ learning and futures? What about your own professional practice – how is it changing, for better or worse?