Getting the Common Core right

I know the Common Core standards fairly well. For six years, culminating with the 2011-12 school year, I was a high school history teacher at a large, urban, public school in Massachusetts. For the last two of those years and the two since, I have been grappling with the Common Core – first, figuring out what it was all about and how it applied to my practice, then, writing Common Core-aligned curriculum for my school, the Massachusetts Department of Education, and then, upon my return to New York, briefly for CUNY and the City DOE.

Controversial from the start, the standards have increasingly become a lightning rod as Core-aligned tests started being administered to students, with alarmingly low success rates among New York’s third-through-eighth graders last year – and greater stakes such as student promotion and teacher evaluation set to become attached as more students are tested.

While we’re arguing over the merits of the Common Core standards and the quality of their implementation, there are crucial aspects of the conversation largely missing.

The first gap: One chronic and crucial misunderstanding about what the Core is. The Common Core is not a curriculum – meaning, it’s not a playbook for districts or for teachers in the classroom.

Instead, it is a mega-list of skills-based standards. It is a compendium of many reading, writing, and thinking skills like “Describe, analyze and evaluate arguments of others,” – to choose one of the briefest standards from a lengthy list.

Everyone should take a good look around these standards, if not read the whole thing – especially if you are opining about it. The standards are ambitious and not easily digestible, even in small bites.

In order for teachers to teach and students to reach the standards, they must have curriculum – the what (materials) and how (activities) of lesson, unit and course plans. Curriculum is the vehicle for picking up skills, meeting or exceeding the Core standards, and arriving in the college and career-ready promised land.

Under the Common Core, whoever is writing the curriculum must merge two sets of material: the standards and the state content frameworks that apply to the grade and subject they are working with. Then, they must figure out what to actually do with students in the classroom to get the content learned and the standards met.

How are standards translated into curriculum? A vague goal like what I’ve described above winds up attached to a content strain like this: “Students will examine President Roosevelt’s leadership during World War II, including his role as commander-in-chief and his diplomatic activities and efforts to forge the Grand Alliance” – to borrow one from United States history, which I used to teach.

So, teacher, how will you make sure that your students can “describe, analyze, and evaluate the arguments of others” while they learn to examine President Roosevelt’s WWII leadership?

That is curriculum development. That is lesson planning. That ain’t so easy.

Districts, schools, departments and teachers across the country – and even many across New York, which has taken the Core plunge ahead of many other states – do not yet have Core-aligned curriculum fully in place. And even if they did, wouldn’t we want at least a couple of years to practice, assess and edit that curriculum before high-stakes tests – which also need to be properly vetted – become so darn important?

In my opinion, no state should have committed to the Common Core without simultaneously committing to a rewrite of its content standards focused on reducing breadth. And the two should have been rolled out together, with time for districts, schools, departments and teachers to become acclimated and create aligned curriculum.

To its credit, New York State has been working to merge the Common Core and the content standards in different subject areas into one outline. For example, the “New York State Common Core Social Studies Framework” was published for public review – in January.

And still, this is not curriculum, which, rightly, continues to be left to districts.

Implemented well – with lots of high quality professional development time for teachers to grapple with the standards and write new curriculum, ongoing assessment of teachers and students and of the assessments themselves that will later be used for higher stakes, and tons of rigorous feedback going in all directions – the Common Core is poised to be a piece of the puzzle toward better schools, better teaching, more learning and more college and career-ready high school graduates.

All that said, if you ask me, the Common Core is not nearly as revolutionary as some might make you think. I see it as a new, much-needed coat of paint on the same old car.

What’s the deeper problem that needs fixing? Most kids, even loads of high-achieving ones, really don’t like school right now, and most teachers are highly frustrated too much of the time. The Common Core will do little, if anything, to change either of these facts.

I subscribe to the notion that we must have high standards, but we must also figure out ways to encourage and affirm young peoples’ curiosities and interests, and guide them in continuing a young child’s love of learning throughout their schooling and lives.

Example: We have volumes of scientific research and even state laws telling us that kids need more exercise and arts in schools. Studies show that 21st century skills are best built through project-based learning, authentic tasks and interdisciplinary scholarship – all of which we do far too rarely in our schools.

Our political leaders and education policy-makers often send their own children to private schools focused on educating “the whole child” and not subject to the very rules and standards they have put in place. Something’s amiss.

So yes, let’s make some wise adjustments and get the Common Core implemented as best possible. But, while we do so, I say let’s also plan for the next “big shift” in education that actually is one.

Max, a former high school history teacher, runs decidenyc.com.