The Two Faces of Common Core

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“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” ~ Albert Einstein

 

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a staff development meeting for all teachers in our school district. It is the first district meeting since the induction of Common Core State Standards in California schools. For all of the positive embracing of Common Core that I’ve been doing, this meeting opened my eyes to the other side of the coin.

The terrific thing about Common Core is that it teaches students critical thinking skills more important to their overall understanding of concepts that build on each other year after year than the old rote drill and kill framework. However, Common Core requires a level of communication that students who have not been raised on the program are not used to. Students are frequently asked to explain orally or in writing how they came up with a response rather than just writing the algorithm. As students spend time learning to communicate in this way, they spend less time practicing algorithms.

Under the previous framework, students who did not have a true grasp of the underlining concepts of, say long division, may still be able to solve long division word problems by plugging in an algorithm. Now, under Common Core, students who do not have a true grasp of this operation will not be able to solve the problem – since they have spent less time practicing algorithm.

These differences are leading *in the fourth and fifth grade classes in my district* to lower grades. Teachers are wondering how to make adaptations for students under this new program. Can they alter the assessments? Well, students still need to meet state standards for division, so no. Do they grade on a curve? I don’t know.

Teachers are frustrated and understandably so. It’s not fair to the students who will be suffering from this transition, poor grades marked forever on their transcripts. Do we remove Common Core? How can we take away something that is so much better for students’ overall education? The answer is we don’t.

I’m pretty sure that answer only deserves partial credit. It’s time to think critically about the rest of the solution.