Rethinking Common Core Standards

When I pick up the daily newspaper and read about the discontent with the New Common Core Standards, I have to ask myself, how many of the objectors have actually read the Common Core Standards? How many of those opposing a set of standards that have been adopted in Ohio since June 2010 took time to sit in on team meetings with teachers and their colleagues? Took apart the standards? Planned the order in which they would be taught? Targeted the important components or shared ideas of how these standards could be taught to the students in their classrooms at their school in their districts?  Does that sound like a Federal Government invasion of our local school district’s curriculum?

Team collaboration has been one of the most important outcomes of implementing these Common Core Standards. Teachers are sharing ideas and determining what is the best way to introduce them to their students as they take into account who their students are. They also discussed strategies for presenting and interventions for those who would need extra help.

Having sat with a variety of teachers from grades k-12, I can say that the teachers I worked with were surprised when they unpacked the standards to find how much more in-depth these standards are than those they used in the Academic Content Standards that were created and implemented by the Ohio Department of Education in 2002. The new standards emphasize critical thinking and problem solving skills that will be needed for our country to stay competitive in the global economy. But more importantly for students to be able to get jobs in the 21st century.

In a March 30, 2013 editorial, Thomas Friedman asserted that our students in America need the ability to be innovative. He consulted Tony Wagner, a Harvard education specialist, who said in an email to Friedman  

“Today, because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication, and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”

Friedman concluded in his March 30, 2013 editorial:  “Reimagining schools for the 21st-century must be our highest priority. We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion, and purpose.” The problem isn’t the standards, but what we do with them and how we teach and test them.

Teachers have been working to implement these new Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Math for over 4 years. Many districts have collaborated and communicated ways to implement them in the classroom this year.  What makes sense about forcing a new set of standards which teachers have never seen onto students with assessments that are unknown to everyone in Ohio?  Or spending those two years creating a new set of standards to be thrust upon educators who will have had NO TIME to prepare for implementation as proposed by those who oppose the Common Core Standards.

I scratch my head when I think of this ridiculous and dangerous move. I have to ask what is the motive behind this kind of thinking?