A casual preview of implementation may lead one to conclude that since clearing points A, B, and C is easy, implementation will be easy.
Such reasoning overlooks the reality that the probability of success shrinks as the number of decision points increases. With three decision points, the odds fall to about 86 percent. It takes 14 decision points for the odds to drop below 50 percent. Then failure is more likely than success. Edited by Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. Sawhill There is also a certain amount of sequential dependence, as the domino analogy above implies. Education consists of loosely coupled organizational units states, districts, schools, classes.
Failure at one level may not be fatal to another. There can be good classes in bad schools, for example, good schools in bad districts, and so on. States or districts might bungle the CCSS, but savvy districts and schools could still rescue the standards and use them effectively. Nevertheless, the vertical structure is useful for modeling how CCSS implementation will unfold.
It is also useful for anticipating political opposition that the CCSS may encounter. Opponents will show up again and again during implementation—in schools, or before school boards, or in other local forums—to continue the battle. The project functions at the national, state, district, school, and classroom levels.
At each of the five levels, decisions have been made or will be made regarding Common Core. Imagine a 4 X 5 table with empty cells for the decision points.
Students put the two numbers at opposite ends of the number line. Then they travel from one number to the next to figure out the distance. It's 4 steps from to , steps from to , 7 steps from to LearnZillion, a company that creates lesson plans for teaching to the Common Core standards, has a 5-minute video explaining this technique.
Here's what it's supposed to look like on another sample problem:. Multiplication, too, is explained visually. Most people learned to multiply two-digit numbers like this:.
Much of this is bound to confuse parents — particularly because in many cases their own math backgrounds aren't particularly strong, and so they can't step in and easily find the answers themselves. But math teachers say parents need to learn to help their kids by asking them more general questions that help them learn the principles behind the problem, rather than stepping in and solving the problem themselves.
More on the Common Core's approach to math here. The federal government didn't write the standards, but it has promoted them. States weren't explicitly required to adopt the Common Core in order to compete for the federal money; they could have used their own standards if they proved to the Education Department that those standards prepared students for college.
Nearly all of them adopted Common Core instead, and all of the states who eventually won the grants were Common Core states. Another grant program was created to help develop tests based on Common Core standards.
The federal government has other levers to promote Common Core, too. It waives some requirements of No Child Left Behind, the education reform law, for states that among other things adopt "college and career-ready standards" and assessments based on those standards. But Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota got waivers from the law without adopting the Common Core by proving that that their standards could prepare kids for college and careers. Opponents of the Common Core are a pretty varied group, as are supporters.
Chamber of Commerce, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush among them and others who oppose it, particularly from the Tea Party. The Democratic party is also divided, as it often is on education reform issues: The Obama administration supports the Common Core, while teachers' unions have concerns about how it's being implemented and some on the left are opposed to continuing to emphasize standardized tests at all.
After George W. Bush expanded the federal role in education through No Child Left Behind, a growing sector of the Republican Party has returned to viewing education as a local and state responsibility. They believe local authorities are best at determining what's appropriate for children to learn in that state or community.
As a result, they distrust the idea of quasi-national standards promoted by the federal government. Some Republican governors who initially supported the Common Core have tried to walk a fine line as controversy has erupted, saying they support the standards but oppose the federal government's involvement.
Others, including presumed candidates in , have denounced it as a federal takeover: Sens. There are also Common Core opponents on the left, who worry about student privacy, the growth of standardized testing, and how the standards are being implemented.
Some liberals are suspicious of the education reform movement, which encourages the growth of charter schools and minimizes the role of teachers' unions. They also don't like that Common Core continues to emphasize standardized testing. Because students are likely to perform poorly on early Common Core tests, they say that those results will be used to argue that American public schools are failing and charter schools or vouchers are the solution. Diane Ravitch, a former Bush administration official who later turned away from the education reform movement, is one of the most prominent opponents from this line of thinking.
She says she supports voluntary national standards in theory, but argues the Common Core standards are untested. She also opposes raising standards so high that students cannot meet them. Standards are about what students should know or know how to do; curriculum is about how they're taught to know or do those things.
For example, the Common Core standards require second-graders to be able to contrast two versions of the same story. But teachers are free to pick what lesson plans are used to teach that skill, and states still pick what books are assigned for children to read. Federal law prohibits the Education Department from interfering in curriculum, which is determined at the state and local level.
However, the Common Core standards are very detailed. The second-grade standard on comparing stories includes an example, although schools aren't required to use it: How the Cinderella tale differs across cultures. Some critics say that this level of detail starts the United States down a slippery slope to a single, national curriculum. Most states that have adopted Common Core standards have also joined one of two groups, called consortia, that are creating new standardized tests.
Every state in each consortium will use the tests that consortium creates. Parents sick of the testing culture are drawing a line with the new Core assessments, and some states are balking at the increased time and costs of these tests. Some parents find the new standards impossibly frustrating, especially the math component, famously skewered by comedian Louis C.
Critics complain that this massive change to American education — one of the most significant shifts ever — was rushed through without any real democratic process or empirical data supporting the value. In March, Indiana, one of the first states to adopt the Common Core, became the first to back out.
In June, South Carolina and Oklahoma followed, and other states are considering at least slowing implementation. In Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal, formerly a strong Core proponent, has done a complete flip and is now battling his state's education superintendent in efforts to scuttle the new standards.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker recently asked the state legislature to drop the standards. Proponents — once elated at how fast the standards were adopted — suddenly find themselves scrambling to stem a mutiny.
They are asking skeptics to simply give the standards a chance, insisting that their emphasis on reasoning and critical thinking will better prepare students for college and the workforce.
Importantly, they worry that suddenly dropping or stalling the Common Core after four years of preparation, without offering a reasonable substitute, will seriously derail teachers and kids. As former Secretary of Education for Massachusetts, Professor Paul Reville was instrumental in the Commonwealth's adoption of the Common Core, and he remains a stalwart supporter.
The central concept, he says, is that the nation's 40 million K—12 students should be offered the same high-standard education no matter where they go to school; a child in Mississippi, say, should finish each grade with the same general proficiencies as one in Maine — and ready to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. This notion was extremely attractive to most of the nation's governors, who worried that curricula developed independently in the nation's 14, school districts varied so dramatically that some children were significantl y disadvantaged simply by geographical accident.
Amity Conkright, Ed. She, too, is an unabashed proponent. I think they've upped the game. Educators, business leaders, and politicians had applauded — at least in theory — the Core's focus on reasoning, analysis, and problemsolving. In contrast to rote memorization, this approach is designed to prepare students for the critical thinking skills that modern employers seek. But once implementation began, teachers and parents were surprised by some changes the Core required, including less emphasis on literature: half of grade-school reading assignments must be nonfiction, and by 12th grade, that rises to 70 percent.
Still, it's the math component that has drawn the most criticism. In order to help students develop problemsolving skills useful in many areas of life, the Core's focus on "conceptual" math requires students to understand the reasoning behind the correct answers to math problems.
It's a major shift, and many parents are finding it near impossible to help their children do their homework. And it's a major modification for teachers, too.
That's a really big shift. What proponents didn't fully predict — perhaps because the standards sailed through with such widespread support — was the rise of so many different pockets of resistance uniting into a nationwide movement to kill the Core.
The discussion has become far messier because debate over the Core has become enmeshed — even conflated — with growing opposition to high-stakes testing. It's been 13 years since a culture of consequential student testing was launched in the George W. Bush administration as part of the No Child Left Behind initiative. Students Receive a World-Class Education. Based on the interest from states, work to develop the standards commenced. Development begins on the college and career ready standards to address what students are expected to know and understand by the time they graduate from high school.
Following that work, an initial feedback group receives the first draft of college and career readiness graduation standards for review. By September, the finally tally will include 51 states and territories.
To prepare to develop the grade by grade standards based on the college and career readiness standards, steps are taken to organize the development and review process. Formal work groups and feedback groups are created to develop and review the K standards. Teachers were involved in the work groups and at every stage of review.
NGA and CCSSO release for public comment a draft of college and career ready standards a product of input from the standards' writing team, state education agency leaders, and a panel of outside education experts and practitioners. Nearly 1, responses, summarized here , were received from educators and the public. States and feedback group provide additional comments.
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