Some Advice for Common Core Supporters
Yesterday at TWIE I gave CCSS supportersa hard time for seeming to give up the affirmative case for the new standards:These days supporters seem to dedicate most of their time to assuring us that the CCSS are not to blame for “fuzzy” math curriculua or “whole language” or questionable history assignments. We are even told that it’s just as well if states opt out of the Common Core altogether because they’re unlikely to gain much from implementation anyway.
On Twitter Morgan Polikoff asked what I would prefer for CCSS supporters to do instead of making these half-hearted defenses. Fair enough, though I don’t really think of myself as part of the team so take all of this with a grain of salt. I’d recommend the following, which are arguably all variations on one or two themes:
1. CCSS supporters need to acknowledge that they overestimated the potential for standards per se to improve curriculum and instruction.Reformers are rarely comfortable wading into the minefields that are debates over C&I, but one of the lessons here should be that you can’t just lean on standards to do that work for you. Frankly, the science of teaching is just not sufficiently advanced and accepted that educators and families will all fall into line if you just give them the right goals to shoot for. Teachers already think their pedagogy is about right for whatever learning objectives you want to establish; if you want them to think differently you need to convince them directly. It is also increasingly apparent that you can’t avoid nasty battles over curriculum by saying “standards are not a curriculum”. You may as well wage that war directly.
2. CCSS supporters should acknowledge that the new standards are not really as unambiguous as they had thought. By convincing themselves that opponents just don’t understand what the standards “really” say, supporters end up repeatedly missing the point. That tactic may work in a few cases, but Some Advice for Common Core Supporters | Paul Bruno: