Should Common Core be repealed?

[DPKdebator]

Should the Common Core curriculum be rescinded? Should it be replaced by state-level curricula, a new national curriculum, or some mix of the two?

[Blue3]

There's nothing to repeal. It was adopted by several states, some made tweaks in their adoption of it.

Common Core is also not really a curriculum... it's a set of standards. Download the Common Core app to see what it's really about.


And honestly, one of the biggest problems with education has been that we haven't actually stuck with a single educational curriculum for a long time... states just keep changing it every few years.

[Republican Left]

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This. It's hard to keep track of progress when your goal posts keep shifting.

[dead0man]

what are the pros and cons?  I know almost nothing about this issue.

[dead0man]

apparently nobody else does either  <shrugs>

[muon2]

apparently nobody else does either  <shrugs>

I actually know quite a bit. I served on the IL panel working on the math standards that became part of Common Core.

In 2008 most of the governors got together at their national conference and decided that they needed to address two problems in K-12 education. One was how to better prepare HS grads for college or career and compete in the global economy with a mobile population. The other was to survive in the No Child Left Behind regime with its unrealistic goals. The solution to both was to craft standards in math and language arts that could be agreed upon by the states at the 80% level - that is the states would agree with at least 80% of the standards. This would lead to a pool of test questions that would allow for some waivers under NCLB. Governors Jindal (LA) and Daniels (IN) were particularly active in putting this together.

In 2008 and 2009 forty states convened panels with of experts from public schools, universities, and business to identify standards that all students should master by the time of HS graduation. These panels were called the American Diploma Project. In the summer of 2009 the states sent their independently researched standards to a company charged with extracting a set such that each state could agree to at least 80% of the standards. That summer the company suggested changing the name from ADP to Common Core as it better reflected what they were doing. From the graduation standards other experts started working backwards to determine what should be mastered at earlier grade levels to reach the HS grad standards. State held hearing, but generally no one showed up except assistant superintendents for curriculum, and there were few if any concerns raised.

In late 2009, as part of the Great Recession stimulus package, the Obama administration rolled out Race To The Top. This was a competitive program for large grants to the states for their public schools. One of the ways of gaining points towards the grant was to adopt Common Core on a fairly aggressive schedule. Many states complained to the US Dep of Ed that this was a bad idea and was likely to politicize the bipartisan work of the previous two years. But RTTT went ahead anyway.

As the state superintendents of education predicted, the changes in Common Core became seen as a product of the Obama administration, not the individual states. By 2012 the public demanded an explanation, since many of these standards involved concepts that left parents unable to fully help their children based on the way they had learned things. All the states could say is that they had had extensive hearings in 2009 leading to adoption in 2010 or 2011. The political pressure led to some states including early leaders LA and IN to rescind Common Core, though that generally meant just changing a couple of state standards and giving it a new name.

The biggest problem was that in order to meet the RTTT challenge, the states implemented it in middle grades without the students seeing the standards in their earlier grades. That created a lot of confusion that was unneeded. The original plan was to adopt it in the earliest grades and let that cohort advance with a uniform set standards for the whole K-12 experience. Of course by now, most of those students who got shifted in the middle grades have graduated and current students have mostly had the same standards all the way through. The standards are still completely state-based and yet it seems that the politicization remains.

[dead0man]

thanks man.

So, let me see if I got the gist of it.  Politicians thought they had a couple of problems, at least one of which was caused by politics, so the politicians tried to fix it with more rules.  Most people didn't care or supported it.  Then Obama did a thing and politicians from the other side decided to turn it all into a political football (I'm not saying either side is more at fault than the other).  There was some issues with how it was rolled out and older people find some of the new ways to learn stupid.  (I remember my kids learning the new way to multiply, I don't know if it's better, but I know it was confusing to me and made me give up trying to help them in math.)

In that case, a big no from me.  I think the way we do school now is not the best way to teach kids.  20-30 random kids, roughly the same age from the same geographical area, put in rows, forced to sit and learn the same things all the other kids are learning can't be the most efficient way to teach young humans.

[Blue3]

Yes, the problem in education isn't with Common Core... it's a whole host of other issues that politicians try to simplify.

1. better funding formulas are needed... particularly ones that aren't dependent on property taxes, or if they are it's the same amount of $ per student either county-wide or state-wide, with the amount of funding a school receives depends purely on # of students (and therefore teachers/staff).

2. smaller classrooms are needed, period

3. more school social workers are needed, schools have become more of a community resource without always receiving the support they need for those kinds of resources and guidance (and better accommodate for students' transportation issues, hunger issues, medical issues)

4. more (trained) mentors/tutors coming in to help students in small groups or 1:1 are needed (see City Year)

5. we need  to have student rights (and just kill the "zero tolerance" policies for anything short of truly harming someone else... a mom making the mistake of packing a fork in the kid's lunchbox shouldn't get the kid expelled on first strike), but also not at the expense of teacher rights (where a parent can just say "I heard the teacher was mean to my kid" even if parent has past history of lying and child neglect herself and the teacher is persecuted and assumed guilty until proven innocent)

6. repeal the laws that make it illegal for a teacher to hold a student back... if anything, abolish the "grade by age" idea altogether... and don't push kids through the system just so superintendents and politicians can say they're raising the graduation rate when they're lowering the standards... focus on a student's personal growth instead of fuzzy statistics... and use standardized tests as diagnostic tools to help teachers better customize their teaching to the particular student's needs instead of a benchmark to pass or else student/teacher/school/district gets punished

7. stop the focus on STEM at the expense of everything else, and bring back an integrated civics curriculum (and don't forget time for play and de-stressing, and for some students even for some sleep... lunches that are 20 minutes, where most students wait 10 minutes in line, then are yelled at for not finishing their food and told to throw it away, and then complain about being hungry the rest of the day... not the way to go)

8. I've learned that an extended school day is probably for the best... but that's very hard for teachers and their energy levels, especially when they have to do so much lesson planning and correcting as well as their own lives. Have an extended school day, but "morning teachers" and "afternoon teachers" who are still paid as full-time. And that also gets back to the students having some "relax" time at school in-between to re-energize as well. Have the day go until dinner is provided, so schools provide 3 good meals a day. Also, the "summer slide" is real... maybe change it to a 2-week break every 2 months. But with this extended school day and year... abolish homework. There can still be projects, which students can choose to do at home if they wish, but has more than enough time to do in-school as well.

*** and what will hopefully come about as a result of all of the above, and is the most important thing that needs to be done: improving school culture

[muon2]

thanks man.

So, let me see if I got the gist of it.  Politicians thought they had a couple of problems, at least one of which was caused by politics, so the politicians tried to fix it with more rules.  Most people didn't care or supported it.  Then Obama did a thing and politicians from the other side decided to turn it all into a political football (I'm not saying either side is more at fault than the other).  There was some issues with how it was rolled out and older people find some of the new ways to learn stupid.  (I remember my kids learning the new way to multiply, I don't know if it's better, but I know it was confusing to me and made me give up trying to help them in math.)

In that case, a big no from me.  I think the way we do school now is not the best way to teach kids.  20-30 random kids, roughly the same age from the same geographical area, put in rows, forced to sit and learn the same things all the other kids are learning can't be the most efficient way to teach young humans.

Yeah, I think you got it. Interestingly Common Core was not supposed to be about teaching everyone the same thing, but about making sure that graduates had certain skills so they could be hired for jobs and avoid remedial classes in college. In the intermediate grades it was designed so that if a family moved there would be some basics in common in the new school. That's why it only covered math and language, not other subjects like science, social studies, or history.

[muon2]

6. repeal the laws that make it illegal for a teacher to hold a student back... if anything, abolish the "grade by age" idea altogether... and don't push kids through the system just so superintendents and politicians can say they're raising the graduation rate when they're lowering the standards... focus on a student's personal growth instead of fuzzy statistics... and use standardized tests as diagnostic tools to help teachers better customize their teaching to the particular student's needs instead of a benchmark to pass or else student/teacher/school/district gets punished

Social promotion like you describe is a double-edged sword. There is the problem that students not held back a grade can have the effect of holding down a whole class depending on the teacher. But if students are held back then at the end of their school years they lack basic skills needed for a career.

Back in the 1960's in west Omaha they used an interesting format where you had a homeroom with an age-appropriate class, but then moved within a 4-grade setting to take different subjects based on the academic skill of the student. Students didn't start it until the 2nd grade and still shifted between buildings by age. I wasn't there for the whole sequence since my family moved, so I don't know how it worked at the JHS/HS level.

[Mr. Smith]

Considering I moved specifically to Texas because they don't use Common Core, I think you can guess my answer.

[Person Man]

thanks man.

So, let me see if I got the gist of it.  Politicians thought they had a couple of problems, at least one of which was caused by politics, so the politicians tried to fix it with more rules.  Most people didn't care or supported it.  Then Obama did a thing and politicians from the other side decided to turn it all into a political football (I'm not saying either side is more at fault than the other).  There was some issues with how it was rolled out and older people find some of the new ways to learn stupid.  (I remember my kids learning the new way to multiply, I don't know if it's better, but I know it was confusing to me and made me give up trying to help them in math.)

In that case, a big no from me.  I think the way we do school now is not the best way to teach kids.  20-30 random kids, roughly the same age from the same geographical area, put in rows, forced to sit and learn the same things all the other kids are learning can't be the most efficient way to teach young humans.

You mean where m * n means to add m to itself for n times?