Common Core

The Common Core curriculum push is being felt in most public schools, many private schools and even in many Christian schools. Is it evil? Is it good?

I would say that it is neither evil nor good. It is a response to the growing concern over the increasing failings of the American educational system. As a country, our international literacy and math scores have been in decline for years. The common core is the first collective response to this issue.

The elements of common core all find their home in tougher standards and rigor. The example in this post is an example of that rigor. It is also an example of asking the student to think in different and higher categories. While I applaud the idea... we do need students to think in higher categories and to work harder, I have some concerns.

In an article in the New York Times, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus wrote,

"It is the uniformity of the exams and the skills ostensibly linked to them that appeal to the Core’s supporters, like Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Bill and Melinda Gates. They believe that tougher standards, and eventually higher standardized test scores, will make America more competitive in the global brain race. “If we’ve encouraged anything from Washington, it’s for states to set a high bar for what students should know to be able to do to compete in today’s global economy,” Mr. Duncan wrote to us in an e-mail."

Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, is an avid supporter of the Common Core along with Bill and Melinda Gates. But, what they do not understand, in my humble opinion, is the complexity of culture and the place of education in that complexity.

Students step out of culture (by way of the family) into a school. The school then molds the students into the adults the culture desires. The common core is a radical change in objectives, and that change came suddenly with little to no communication. Yet, the culture has continued to go in the opposite direction. Now, we have a school system asking students to become accountable, hard working and higher categorical thinkers while those students step out of a culture demanding less and less from its adults in respect to those same three objectives. Government grows and so does the number of adults on government programs. More is being asked of our students than of our adults. So, of course there is going to be a disconnect.

Hacker and Dreifus wrote concerning the motivation behind the common core push,

"The answer is simple. “College and career skills are the same,” Ken Wagner, New York State’s associate commissioner of education for curriculum, assessment and educational technology, told us. The presumption is that the kind of “critical thinking” taught in classrooms — and tested by the Common Core — improves job performance, whether it’s driving a bus or performing neurosurgery. But Anthony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, calls the Common Core a “one-size-fits-all pathway governed by abstract academic content."

Hacker and Dreifus ask the question, "In sum, the Common Core takes as its model schools from which most students go on to selective colleges. Is this really a level playing field? Or has the game been so prearranged that many, if not most, of the players will fail?" While I do not think common core is a malicious attempt to fail students collectively, I do think it was a good idea that received support and funding quickly which produced a gathering growing movement that could not be stopped.

What will come of it? I have no idea. But, before judging it too harshly, gather your information, first, before you listen to all pundits who offer their views, and then, arrive at your own view.