Common Core math standards add up to a big money for education companies
Teachers have to be savvy shoppers as glut of new products enters the marketplace
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The politically controversial standards curriculum standards known as the Common Core have been in the headlines for months, in Louisiana and across the country. But for most teachers and educators the standards have been quietly transforming classroom instruction for years. And for textbook publishers and other vendors, the new standards add up to new business. Sarah Carr reports on the dizzying array of new education products that claim to be ‘Common Core aligned.’
When thousands of math teachers descended on New Orleans earlier this year, two words proved more seductive than chocolate. Or sex. Or even quadratic equations.
Common Core.
The teachers were in town to attend the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual conference. The exhibit hall featured endless booths stocked with Common Core textbooks, Common Core legos, Common Core geometry sets, Common Core MOOCs (which stands for massive open online courses). There were even flying robots that vendors said could help children learn the Common Core.
“We sometimes laugh and say that Staples is going to make a lot of money on a rubber stamp that says ‘100 percent Common Core-aligned,’” said Linda Gojak, the council’s former president.
Greta Anderson, a 5th grade math teacher at New Orleans’ Dibert elementary school, has helped her peers adjust to the new Common Core curricular standards. (Photo: FirstLine schools)
Gojak chuckles when I ask her if vendors feel pressured to put the Common Core stamp on their products.
“If they want to sell it,” she says.
A few companies are using the Common Core craze as a reason to sell more stuff and make more money. Stacy Monsman, a math coach in an Ohio school district, noticed a glut of products almost immediately.
“When Common Core comes out, literally within a few weeks you saw materials with that sticker on it and there’s no way, the Common Core just came out,” she said. “There’s no way that a good thorough job could have been done to truly incorporate everything into some kind of material.”
But Gojak and others say most vendors really want to align their products with the Common Core — whether they are textbook publishers who are rewriting lesson plans, or the creators of MOOCs aimed at explaining the standards to teachers. But all this change takes time.
So in the short term, at least, teachers need to be cautious consumers, said Greta Anderson, the chair of the math department at New Orleans’ Dibert elementary school.
“Everything is saying right now that they are ‘Common Core-aligned’ and some things are really top notch and others aren’t,” Anderson said. “It takes deeply knowing the standards. It takes looking at Common Core math standards add up to a big money for education companies | The Hechinger Report:
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