Teaching to CCSS: Making Bricks Without Straw?
by Robert PondiscioOctober 17th, 2012
The following post originally appeared on Schoolbook, the education blog of WNYC, New York City’s public radio station. It appears here with the permission of the author. – rp
Bricks Without Straw
By Matthew Levey
By Matthew Levey
A decade into the education reform movement in New York, we have doubled our school budget to $24 billion. We’ve focused on teacher quality, and how to measure it. We’ve created many new, often smaller, schools. Unfortunately our students’ scores on the key tests like the SAT and NAEP haven’t budged.
Frustrated reformers have pinned their hopes on new Common Core State Standards (CCSS ) that make explicit what a college-ready student should be able to do in math, reading and writing. The CCSS say content matters, but the authors didn’t dictate whichcontent to teach or how to deliver it.
Under CCSS, third graders “develop an understanding of fractions, beginning with unit fractions” but the CCSS do not say how. Eighth graders should be