Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Even under new law, Common Core still impacts curriculum

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Even under new law, Common Core still impacts curriculum:

Even under new law, Common Core still impacts curriculum

Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience. -- John Dewey

Remember back a couple of years ago when Common Core critics were being raked over the coals by Arne Duncan, Peter Cunningham and others for calling CCSS a curriculum?

Here's Duncan in 2013:

The Common Core has become a rallying cry for fringe groups that claim it is a scheme for the federal government to usurp state and local control of what students learn. An op-ed in the New York Times called the Common Core “a radical curriculum.” It is neither radical nor a curriculum. … When the critics can’t persuade you that the Common Core is a curriculum, they make even more outlandish claims.

"It's not a curriculum," they scolded. "It's merely standards." Such a dichotomy! Supposedly, Common Core wouldn't tell schools what, when, or how to teach. Rather, it would only create performance goals and, of course, the battery of tests to go with them.

Well, Duncan was right about Common Core not being "radical." But Common Core sure as hell is curricular. If not, why, for example is there something called Common Core algebra as opposed to just algebra? Or Common Core U.S. History?

A year later, it was Duncan's former deputy, Peter Cunningham, now writing forMike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Even under new law, Common Core still impacts curriculum: