Common Core: Why the curriculum doesn't match the standard
Cory Turner/NPR
Just some of the more than 700 math books that have been reviewed for Common Core alignment by professor William Schmidt and his team at Michigan State's Center for the Study of Curriculum.
Right now, America's schools are in a sprint. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards. That means new learning benchmarks for the vast majority of the nation's young students — millions of kids from kindergarten through high school. And, for many of them, the Core will feel tougher than what they're used to. Because it is tougher.
It's a seismic shift in education meant to better prepare kids for college, career and the global economy. But new standards as rigorous as the Core require lots of other changes — to textbooks, lesson plans, homework assignments. In short: curriculum and the materials needed to teach it. And that's the problem. Right now, much of that stuff just isn't ready.
Before we get further into the problem, let's be clear: The Common Core is a set of standards, not curriculum. There's a difference. Standards are goals we set for kids. For example, one Common Core math standard says fifth-graders should be able to use place value understanding to round decimals to any place.
Curriculum is what teachers do every day in the classroom to achieve that goal. Again, different. But, if you change standards, you've got to change curriculum too. And that's the challenge right now with the Common Core. Because most states have made big changes to their standards, forcing districts and schools to do the same to their curricula.
"There's been no time in American history where this number of school districts wanted to swap out all their reading and math materials at all grades for new things," says Jay Diskey, with the Association of American Publishers.
This race to update and upgrade all that stuff ends next year, when those millions of kids take their first Common Common Core: Why the curriculum doesn't match the standard | 89.3 KPCC:
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