Common Core Introduction

I had a brief conversation with a friend the other day about common core. She mentioned that she hadn't heard anything good about it, and I realized that I needed to share my knowledge. I am a public school teacher in Utah: I have taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades for 6 years.  I taught before Common Core for several years, and I have now taught with Common Core for several years.  The opponents of common core are many and vocal, but there are a lot of good things about it that aren't being mentioned. I'm going to try to highlight some of those over the next few days. I welcome dialogue, but I ask that you be kind. I hope that, maybe, I can convince some of you to look for a compromise to deal with some of the issues of common core without losing the benefits.

Addressing this fully takes me several, very long posts.  I know it's long, but addressing an issue in an informative way takes more than a few catch phrases.

Point #1: NOT Obamacore
Common core is NOT Obamacore and is not federal control. In response to some of the problems of our nation's education system, the National Governor's Association convened a group to develop the standards. The governors of this nation recognized that we needed to better prepare students for college and careers, and that working together would be for the benefit of students. Common core was not a federal mandate: 6 states have not adopted it. The 44 who have have done so because they recognized the benefits. Utah did not adopt common core because our arm was twisted: we were one of the leaders in the movement, developing the assessments that the whole nation would use.

President Obama and the Department of Education did offer additional federal funding through the Race to the Top program.  In order to enter that program, you had to have college and career ready standards.  Common Core counts, but Virginia and Texas chose to write their own college and career ready standards.  It does not affect current funding.   I understand why many people are concerned about the federal involvement, but you can see it's not a mandate. I also understand that many people feel that we will have to accept any future changes whether we like them or not. We will not: in fact, in response to some of the issues with common core, Utah has sort of unadopted it and readopted it under the title Utah Core Standards. That may seem like semantics, but what it means is that any change to the Common Core doesn't change the Utah Core until we say so.

My first compromise suggestion: Instead of trying to get rid of common core completely, I propose that we fight for what we want from the department of education. From what I have heard, most people agree that we need the federal money, so what terms do we find acceptable to get that money? Let's try to fight for the Department of Education to change their requirements instead of getting rid of something that is the best thing to happen to education in 20 years.

Point #2: Design
Common core is very nicely aligned vertically and horizontally. It is designed start to finish with the same goal in mind. In other words, kindergarteners are on a track to accomplish 12th grader skills. In first grade, it adds a little bit to the skill, in second grade a bit more, etc. This is good teaching practice and makes it easy to build on students' previous knowledge. It's also nicely aligned horizontally. So, I'm supposed to be teaching my students to support their reading claims with evidence, and then that ties right in to argumentative writing, where they need to back up their claims with evidence. In fact, after teaching argumentative writing for several months, I saw my students DRA reading scores jump because they knew how to back up their opinions. The first time I saw common core, I literally thought, "Our previous state core was written by monkeys." It's THAT much better. (If you are one of the writers of the previous Utah core, I apologize.)