Common Core Enthusiast Didn’t Get The Memo(s)
Angie Hanlin needs to get her name on some distribution lists. There are a few important memos she seems not to have gotten.
Ms. Hanlin was quoted in a Standard Democrat article this week supporting the Common Core Standards. I believe she truly enjoys the work she is doing to implement Common Core and she is no doubt seeing some results, but her message in the article is often at odds with those of CCSSI, NGA and CCSSO. Some of her statements are contrary to what other experts have said about Missouri standards.
Hanlin claims that the challenge of Common Core stems from the implementation.
How you implement the standards is by changing your instructional practices…If you keep teaching how you’re teaching and just change what you’re teaching, it won’t work. It’s how you teach that you have to change.
Missing Memo: When describing Common Core be sure to stress that they are just standards. They don’t tell you how to teach. Teachers and districts have complete autonomy to choose the curriculum.
If the greatest problem with common core is the implementation process, then correct implementation, according to her, means changing how you teach, which means common core, if done right, does in fact tell you how to teach.
Common Core is the first set of standards where every grade builds upon the previous grade. We’ve never done that before, Hanlin said.
Missing Memo: The DESE crosswalks of the common core standards and the existing Missouri Grade Level Expectations. These documents show a tremendous amount of overlap between the two. http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/common-core-math.htm#crosswalk
We have had standards that build upon each other for years. Hanlin’s statement is false.
Our students in Southeast Missouri can have the education students are getting in Boston, Mass. We’ve never been in that category, and we are now.
Missing Memo: Margaret Spellings visited MO in 2008 during her tenure as US Secretary of Education. In a meeting with DESE and the SBE, after mentioning that Massachusetts’ standards usually gets the limelight, said “It’s a little known fact is that Missouri’s standards are right up there and really really strong.”
