As readers know, I am agnostic about the Common Core standards.
I want to see how they work in reality before supporting or opposing them. I know the case for both views.
However, I am troubled by the rush to force compliance without trial. I am concerned about shoddy implementation without preparation or resources. I am concerned about diversion of resources fro classroom. I am concerned that corporate interests are eagerly waiting for scores to fall so they can rush to sell stuff to schools or replace teachers with gadgets.
Michal Paul,Goldenberg is not just concerned. He is opposed to the CC. Read here to learn why.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They will never ever control our minds. Teaching is a human experience based upon relationships and developing relationships.
They don’t get that and they never will.
I can easily fake the common bore upon inspection, then close the door and do what I want because I KNOW my kids.
They do not know MY kids and they never will because teachers have something they will never have: experience and relationships.
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Here in NYC, they’ll test your kids’ knowledge of the common core, in whatever the most recent iteration is, and parents would flip out if they heard their kids’ teacher was faking it. Those tests have the weight of SATs here. It’s not fair to teachers, or anybody, but it’s no joke.
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I am teaching. They are faking it. I know my kids. They never will.
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That is what I plan to do too Linda. The CSS are complete BS, and I don’t think will help our students learn at all. At least we both know how to “play the game”, but still give our students an education that will last them a lifetime.
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so your districts aren’t conducting regular walk-through observations? That’s how my district has successfully put the kibosh on “doing what you want to do”
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“As readers know, I am agnostic about the Common Core standards.”
What a wonderful way of phrasing my own beliefs about the Common Core. Thanks, Diane, I’ll be using that one.
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The standards movement is where all this madness started. I don’t see how you can be agnostic about the common core yet adamantly opposed to mandatory testing. It’s like being agnostic about bullets.
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We have no curriculum. No pacing schedule. Our current materials do not lend themselves to what the CCS are all about (or so we’re told). Endless websites to research. Too much paperwork involved in just trying to stay current on the “latest in CCS”. Sometimes I feel I won’t be able to serve my students anymore. Someone, please help!
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As an art educator and a district curriculum coordinator, I have spent time thinking about the CCSS. There are valid skills in those standards. Think of the CCSS as a set of paintbrushes, not a painting, and they become a useful tool. As the educator, I choose which standard (“paintbrush”) will help my students get to our education goals (“painting”). I don’t feel a compulsion to use the CCSS exclusively, but I will consider some standards as a guide. Taking a polarized view for or against CCSS can inhibit the possibility that they have the potential to be valuable, or that there is nothing else of value students can learn. Take charge of the CCSS, don’t let CCSS take charge of you.
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Until your evaluation is determined by how your art students perform on a computerized bubble test…then your viewpoint may change. Many have said it is not merely the standards but how they will be manipulated….the intention is not to improve standards alone…it is also a way to reduce the labor costs so the money can be funneled elsewhere. The devil is in the details and the public is awakening.
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Good effective teaching is the focus of my job. I teach an AP class, so how well my students perform on a test is currently part of my teaching responsibility. My evaluation will be affected by showing student growth in just a couple of years, but showing student growth is something I hold myself accountable to, now. If skills that are aligned to some of the CCS can be utilized in my classroom, it will support my students. Art teachers don’t get a “pass.” I don’t have to wait, I’m there now, and I still see the CCS as a tool to help my students develop valuable skills, as an addition to all the others.
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Wait until there are 6 week assessments throughout the school year to determine whether or not you’ve actually taught the “art”. Wait until you must post what you are doing, CCS, outside every piece of “artwork” your students have created and displayed. Wait until your job may depend upon whether or not your students pass said criteria. You just might change your tune!
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As educators we all hold ourselves to those standards you mention. Anything that will help our students, will be utilized. AP classes? I guess that means you’re starting at a higher level with students who have been placed in these classes based on prior academic assessment. While I do agree there has to be some sort of “standard”, the way it’s being introduced as if this is what we’ve all been waiting for, is not helping me become a better teacher nor is it helping my students. I spend hours looking through all the websites thrown at me by supervisors who are just as much in the dark as I am!
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Like everyone else, I do not support standardized testing as a way to determine how well our school and teachers are doing. Many teachers in my school see the CCS in an interpretive way, not as a strict script for teaching, and our administration supports that viewpoint fully. I’m merely stating that many of the skills that are part of the CCS can be valuable to my students, so I will incorporate the appropriate ones into my teaching.
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And many of us were already incorporating them, so this isn’t new. Having the standards tied to test scores, thus a student’s worth and a teacher’s value and employmen, is the curse and one purpose of the Gates/Coleman charade. You see, we must find a way to reduce the labor costs in education to funnel the taxpayer funds elsewhere…preferably back into the pockets of their cronies. It is one incestuous circle packaged as “reform”.
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Comments and opposition abound and rightly so. No idea or change works with this level of instant requirement, assessment, and evaluation. A better way to have brought this forward might have been to simply focus on questioning and thinking. Help teachers change from asking students to memorize the names of the 50 states, having them group them by similarities – for example, in science, they could group them by weather similarities, in social studies, by their geography or the decades in which or conditions by which they became a state, in English, by what famous writers wrote about them, in math, by their population, in art, by paintings that were done about them, in music, by songs written about them, in physical education, by their sports teams etc. Making the change to that type of integration which requires much conversation and planning among faculty – and the idea that students aren’t simply memorizing, but are thinking about and grouping the information is a shift that takes time. The students would have done a deeper study and the Common Core would have begun. That would be quite enough to do to begin don’t you think?
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What makes you think interdisciplinary lesson planning, higher order thinking and integration wasn’t already happening? Who ever said all kids were merely memorizing random facts? You have been misinformed by the “reformers”.
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Are you a native English speaker?
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Sadly, too many believe that content standards, of any sort, whether common, aligned, or unique, will magically transform student achievement. While they may create commonality in desired content focus or learning outcomes, their influence on student achievement is unproven and wishful thinking.
Such misplaced faith may salve the conscious of some, and justify the righteousness of others, yet standards have no discernible impact on student learning other than establishing shared content and/or practice. Educational outcomes transcend myopic measures of non-causal factors. No amount of hope helps when pushing a rope.
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@ Daveaka…It required more than one reading of your contribution to the discussion for me to parse out it’s full meaning. I have to chuckle at your choice of words. I agree with your statement. Thanks for the thoughtful response. A fellow math teacher.
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Diane: Read this article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-usa-charters-parents-idUSBRE91E0HR20130215. $3,000 donation to attend a charter school, wow?
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I don’t mind a national curriculum. For years we’ve been playing the “Guess what’s inside the State Department of Ed.’s head” game every time a curriculum was up for review. Being an elementary teacher, I had to be part of the discussions for all the subjects I teach. I do resent the way this came about, however. It is all top- down, from what I can see: from its creation to the skills and concepts taught. Taking the skills needed for college and working backward does not make sense to me: emphasis becomes one strictly of preparing them for college. Beginning the skills continuum from the primary grades so that they are DEVELOPMENTALLY APPPROPRIATE (sorry for the “yelling”: I can’t italicize on my iPad) makes much more sense.
I also have a major issue with the “steps” of skills and concepts taught, whereby all skills that were to be mastered the previous year may not be retaught in successive years. So, if my class were to be struggling with something they were taught in first
grade, supposedly I am not able to spend a few minutes reviewing that information. In the early years, these building blocks of knowledge must be learned before children can move forward in their learning. Were there any primary grade teachers on this committee?
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