The Trouble with Common Core Standards
Common Core Standards
“…charter chains would prefer national standards… This would allow them to use prepackaged curricula across their charter outlets no matter the location…for dummied down standardized curriculum keeps costs down and the dispensation is formulaic and repetitive. This is the Walmart model of education.”Danny Weil, 2009
To follow what’s going on in the realm of Common Core Standards, I suggest taking a look at Truth in American Education. For folks in Washington State, check outStop Common Core in Washington State.
Rethinking Schools published an article titled The Trouble with the Common Core which is a good overview of the subject. To follow is an excerpt:
It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country. Although these “world-class” standards raise substantive questions about curriculum choices and instructional practices, such educational concerns are likely to prove less significant than the role the Common Core is playing in the larger landscape of our polarized education reform politics.
We know there have been many positive claims made for the Common Core:
- That it represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge.
- That it requires more progressive, student-centered teaching with strong elements of collaborative and reflective learning.
- That it equalizes the playing field by raising expectations for all children, especially those suffering the worst effects of the “drill and kill” test prep norms of the recent past.
We also know that many creative, heroic teachers are seeking ways to use this latest reform wave to serve their students well. Especially in the current interim between the rollout of the standards and the arrival of the tests, some teachers have embraced the Common Core as an alternative to the scripted commercial formulas of recent experience, and are trying to use the space opened up by the Common Core transition to do positive things in their classrooms.
We’d like to believe these claims and efforts can trump the more political uses of the Common Core project. But we can’t.
For starters, the misnamed “Common Core State Standards” are not state standards. They’re national standards, created by Gates-funded consultants for the National Governors Association (NGA). They were designed, in part, to circumvent federal restrictions on the adoption of a national curriculum, hence the insertion of the word “state” in the brand name. States were coerced into adopting the Common Core by requirements attached to the federal Race to the Top grants and, later, the No Child Left Behind waivers. (This is one reason many conservative groups opposed to any federal role in education policy oppose the Common Core.)
Written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties to testing The Trouble with Common Core Standards | Seattle Education:
