A careful look at the Common Core State Standards and the schools and districts that have faithfully adopted them shows they can help create students ready for the increasing demands of the 21st century.
The controversy over the Common Core is overblown and out of balance. Critics see the Core as inherently evil with a life of its own, often citing disturbing examples of the Common Core being used to advance a political agenda. But the Common Core is an inanimate tool. Any damage done on its behalf is a function of the user — not the tool. Think of hammers, flashlights, and electricity — all with the potential to do good things — but, in the hands of a fool or a villain, not so much.
In spite of the misconceptions and often deliberate distortions about what the Common Core is and isn’t, many districts have decided to take advantage of the Core to develop an improved curriculum and instructional program. In such districts, our experience with the Common Core has been a positive one. We’ve come to call these Core-adopting districts “believing” districts because they believe that embracing the Core will improve student learning in their communities. Through our work in believing districts, we’ve observed the following:
#1. They don’t waste time admiring the problem — they tackle it.
There’s no question that adopting the Common Core ends business as usual. But then if business-as-usual were working well, the nation’s schools and their communities would be satisfied with student achievement, and every child would be having academic success. Believing districts have stopped wasting energy on blaming parents, financial constraints, the government, each other, and the students themselves. Instead, they have buckled down to look at their curriculum and their classroom instruction in the cold light of student performance. They’re asking themselves about their academic strengths and weaknesses; they’re looking for patterns and trying to see how those patterns might be traced back to classroom instruction.
#2. They don’t cling to prior standards — they see the advantage of the Common Core.
Unlike other standards, which tend to focus on skill-by-skill outcomes, often at a literal or rote level, the Common Core integrates multiple skills and requires analytic and critical thinking. Students are expected to drill down into the deep structure of documents and problems and to identify connections among facts and ideas. They must cite evidence in texts and problems or scenarios and not merely give an impression or unsupported opinion. Formerly, there was considerable teacher telling, and mastery consisted of giving back what the teacher or the text had said about an issue. With the Common Core, students are learning how to discover relationships within and among concepts, but mastery occurs when students construct meaning for themselves in parallel but unfamiliar situations.
Believing districts don’t admire the problem; they tackle the problem.
The intent is to prepare students to critically analyze information and events and become problem solvers — precisely what life in this global and technological age will require of them. Believing districts see the Common Core as an opportunity to move their academic expectations from the 20th to the 21st century — for their students and their staffs. They can see that the Common Core can revitalize their classrooms with rigor and relevance if it is properly and strategically implemented.
#3. They don’t look for external solutions — they start and end internally.
Many districts have pretended to believe by buying a ready-made solution from a vendor or neighboring district and calling it compliance. Nothing in their day-to-day classroom instruction has really changed. They tack a few cosmetic lists on the wall, and teachers use some of the relevant jargon (e.g., “I can” statements, “data notebooks,” “rigor and relevance,” etc.) on demand. But the increased rigor of their academic expectations consists of no more than saying so, and the levels of student achievement remain essentially the same. This counterfeit compliance, while it may do no harm, likely won’t result in substantive and enduring improvement. Truly believing districts make a sincere commitment that begins with the Board of Education — including the policies, procedures, and resources needed — and threads its way throughout the district, becoming an expectation for every staff member and student. It includes the 3Rs: an honest internal review of what is working and what is not; the removal of programs, procedures, and initiatives that are barriers to success; and replacement of these barriers with legitimate processes from the Common Core.
#4. They don’t publish spiffy-looking documents — they develop useful classroom tools.
We chuckled appreciatively at Mike Schmoker’s description of today’s curriculum as:
Typically a riot of moving parts, of columns and boxes packed with ambitious terms and buzzwords, big ideas, suggested activities, resources, and differentiation strategies, technology integration, assessment ideas, and readings . . . all replete with long, cryptic lists of alphanumeric references to state standards covered. They are visually and conceptually bewildering (Schmoker, 2014).
Although they’re bound in tabbed and colorful binders, the major function of these doorstoppers is to be so elaborate and complicated as to ensure that no one will read them, much less use them. By contrast, believing districts assemble teams of grade-level teachers to:
- Examine the Common Core standards and thus define what students will do to demonstrate mastery and what strategies teachers will use to help students construct meaning;
- Thoughtfully cluster the standards into chunks that address a unifying theme or topic that provides a life context in which to address the cluster of standards;
- Develop course tools for classroom use, such as pacing guides, curriculum maps, or unit plans that actually guide each teacher’s daily classroom instruction; and
- Devise common, standards-based assessments at each grade level to continuously monitor student performance and to provide timely and specific intervention to each student.
By trusting and supporting teachers to develop these course tools, believing districts rely on and support teachers to make the important decisions about what student mastery looks like and how it can best be facilitated and monitored. But these teachers are also held accountable for using the materials they develop and for ensuring that every student has adequate opportunities to experience academic success.
#5. They don’t ignore the literacy standards — they integrate them across subjects.
And then there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room — the literacy standards for grades 6-12. Although they appear in the English language arts document, the literacy standards are to be taught in social studies, science, and technical subjects such as math. The Common Core research finds that most American students entering college and the workforce can’t successfully interpret such nonfiction as manuals, legal documents, court transcripts, speeches, research findings, treaties, etc. They need a teacher to guide them through it. To be self-sufficient consumers, students must be able to independently read and process such complex information. Many districts have ignored these literacy standards or presumed that language arts teachers would be responsible for them. The result has been that no department is taking this responsibility and students are leaving school unprepared for the types of text to be encountered in college or chosen careers. Schools have not been diligent in making sure that what students read is 70% informational text — not textbooks.
Believing districts, however, have accepted the challenge and brought together the four core content areas to work out cooperative techniques and strategies to address the literacy standards in reading and writing. Students read and process authentic nonfiction/informational text in the respective subjects, focusing on technical vocabulary, central ideas, text structure, and cross-referencing source credibility. In literacy writing standards, the English/language arts, science, math, and social studies teachers share responsibility for helping students in grades 6-12 gather credible information, organize it into viable informational and argumentative research projects, and assemble it for effective and documented presentation.
Closing thoughts
There is no shortage of debate and frustration about the Common Core. Critics argue that it’s too much government interference with what is each state’s responsibility. They resent the manipulation of federal funding and the obsession with testing and collecting student data. Supporters insist that the Core actually helps states raise academic performance expectations for its students and its teachers. They feel the content and rigor of the Common Core are consistent with that of countries that are outperforming the U.S. in education.
We focus on what schools have done to move things forward, rather than listen to sensationalized stories that are the result of poor judgment on the part of the district or an individual teacher. One state that claimed to have rescinded the Common Core published its new standards, and these “new” standards were consistent with the Common Core with a few slight wording changes. The bottom line is that standards are necessary, and if districts choose not to use the Common Core, they have to have something.
Reference
Schmoker, M. (2014, January 15). Education’s crisis of complexity. Education Week, 33 (17), 28, 22. www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/15/17schmoker_ep.h33.html?tkn=NXYF8poZx3xMHdESotFbHo0myIAyrpdrYEtN&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2
CITATION: March, J.K. & Peters, K.H. (2015). Telling the truth about the Common Core. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (8), 63-65.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Judith K. March
JUDITH K. MARCH is a senior consultants with EdFOCUS Initiative Inc., a nonprofit education consultant group based in East Palestine, Ohio and coauthor of The Common Core, an uncommon opportunity: Redesigning classroom instruction .
Karen H. Peters
KAREN H. PETERS is a senior consultant with EdFOCUS Initiative Inc., a nonprofit education consultant group based in East Palestine, Ohio, and coauthor of The Common Core, an uncommon opportunity: Redesigning classroom instruction .
