Debate sparks Common Core discussion

Last night's debate between senatorial candidates generated a spirited discussion about the Common Core on on my Facebook page. It clearly illustrates the amount of confusion and misinformation that's out there. With names removed, here's what was said:

MY ORIGINAL POST: Just one more thing..the Common Core is not a federal curriculum. And it's needed 

FRIEND ONE: Why is the common core needed or necessary?  

FRIEND TWO: Someone is going to have to convince me that the Common Core is more effective than math techniques used in the past. From what I've experienced, it requires kids to use all of these different approaches and to show their work when, really, just as we did, they know how to get the answer through memorization or simple reasoning. I LOATHE the common core.  

FRIEND THREE: My understanding from my teacher friends is that CC is a set of standards. It is not a curriculum or a teaching technique. It does promote critical thinking, problem solving and reasoning skills. It is up to the individual school districts to use a curriculum that help students meet CC Standards. Some companies market their curriculum as being "aligned with CC standards" and although this increases book sales, it may or may not be the case. Herein lies some of the confusion and some of the crazy things we've all seen in the media and on the internet.

ME: (Friend Three) is exactly right. It's a set of standards that was adopted while I was at the Department of Ed, so I got the good fortune of watching the process up close. It came from the realization among state level folks -- in the association of state education directors or commissioners and in the association of governors -- that students in the US were not keeping up with students in other countries and students in some states were not being taught to the same level of standards as students in other states. 

We were lucky in Arkansas because we already had a high set of standards thanks to some strong educational leaders at the state department. That made it easy for us to sign on to the Common Core effort. All we had to do was readjust where some of our key concepts were taught. For example, I remember that some of the big concern involved introducing algebraic concepts at lower grade levels than we had previously.  

The other big focus, as (Friend Three) said, was to to teach at a deeper level of understanding to make sure students really understand the most basic concepts. In Arkansas, the one criticism I often heard from teachers with our standards (or curriculum frameworks) was that they were so broad that they were tough to cover in a year's time. The Common Core should help with that issue. 

School personnel determine how the Common Core is to be taught in their classes, so it really gives teachers more freedom. 

Common Core is suffering a lot of the same plight as Obamacare in that it gives government-fearing folks a stick to use -- except they haven't done their homework. This did not stem from Obama but from the states themselves.

I doubt that will be the end of the discussion...feel free to join in with your comments here!

Half-truths at best about Common Core

If everything that was put out there about the Common Core State Standards at Saturday’s anti-Common Core rally were true, we’d be running away from it too.

But it wasn’t.

In fact, we heard a lot of half-truths, totally misinformed statements and emotional grandstanding during the long-winded rally.

We also heard this story from a neutral observer who just wanted to learn more about Common Core. It’s a story that illustrates an important point about the environment Common Core now faces:

A friend had a daughter who was struggling in her high school math class this year. What could be different? Why, the Common Core was being newly implemented. That horrible Common Core – it was causing all the “harm to students” the naysayers said it would. Further investigation, however, showed that the girl hadn’t been keeping up with her homework, thus the falling grades. 

Having been employed in communications at the Arkansas Department of Education from 2005-2011, we were there when Common Core was just a hopeful idea to help students all across the country meet their potential and a plan to keep the United States from falling farther behind other developed nations both educationally and economically.

Because we were involved at that stage, we went to Saturday’s event knowing quite a bit about the early context and development of the Common Core State Standards. You can read those in Friday’s post.

Rally at the Capitol on Feb. 1

Here are just three of the things we heard Saturday that alarmed us, to say the least, and that also made us realize that Arkansans are in need of accurate information about Common Core. This anti-group said:

• Common Core narrows the curriculum, so students are learning less. This half-truth, sadly, was voiced by a high school teacher.  Yes, it’s true, the Common Core for both math and English focus on deeper levels of learning of the most important concepts and skills. Gone are the broad array of facts that teachers must cover to meet the former Arkansas curricular expectations.  This teacher said there’s so little to teach, that kids just sit in class with nothing to do. That reminds me of concerns I heard about block scheduling – that too many teachers new to the block system failed to use the expanded period to teach more meaningful, hands on lessons. Instead, they were delivering their same 30-minute lecture and letting students spend the rest of the time doing homework and visiting.  I’m not blaming teachers…maybe better training on how to incorporate Common Core learning standards into the classroom is needed.

• Common Core produces workers, not thinkers. Again, a half-truth used to scare. I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t want her childreb to be able to land jobs  when they graduate, whether from college or high school.  So, yes, an important goal of Common Core is to prepare American students to be able to compete in the 21^st Century economy. But, here’s the catch. Never before has landing a good job so depended on an individual’s ability to think critically, to problem solve, to adapt to new situations, to communicate well, and to learn new concepts and processes. And the reason Arkansas wanted Common Core implemented is so ALL of our students would benefit from this curriculum.

• Common Core is a big plot to line the pockets of testing companies. True, testing companies will continue to make lots of money to research, test, implement, score and report test results. It's a complicated, sophisticated job, after all. But that was happening long before Common Core – ACT, SAT, SOAR, AP, states’ benchmark testing --  a decent argument can be made that students spend too much time being tested in recent years.  I’m not sure we’ve got the accountability equation right yet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not needed. Common Core assessments, though, when fully implemented, will serve a purpose beyond accountability. For example, students will have summative tests along the way to determine which, if any, concepts need more time for mastery.  

We heard so many more false charges that we'll attempt to address later -- Common Core is rewriting history, brainwashing students, the stimulus for teacher evaluation systems, and the list goes on! Not only do students and parents need a better understanding of why Common Core is important and beneficial, but, it seems, so do many of our educators. And the facts need to start being sounded much more loudly than the vocal opposition we heard Saturday.

And the (anti) beat goes on

The anti-Common Core march in Arkansas is on. Literally. A group of protesters to the new and deeper learning standards for students will gather at the Arkansas Capitol at 2 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 1).

We’re all for the Constitutional rights to free speech and the right to assemble, and therefore respect their rights to make their case in this fashion. But we feel called to exercise our First Amendment right as well and state again that First Class Communication firmly throws our support to the teaching of the Common Core.

We plan on being at the Capitol Saturday to hear what these Arkansas Against Common Core organizers have to say, but we’ll be armed with a few facts of our own. Here’s what we know for sure about Common Core in Arkansas:

• State education leaders across the country – as well as governors both Republican & Democrat – warmly embraced the idea and strongly supported the development of the Common Core. Common Core has the support of Gov. Mike Beebe, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the State Board of Education, the Arkansas Department of Education and many, many educators and citizens across the state.

•  One of the early and loudest cheerleaders for the Common Core was Gene Wilhoit, then head of the Council of Chief State School Officers and at one time director of the Arkansas Department of Education. 

• The Common Core student learning standards were developed by leading educators from the local, state and national levels. Common Core was not a top-down mandate.

• The process involved studying the best state student learning standards at the time as well as SLEs being taught in nations that are leading the world in education achievement. Student learning standards in English and mathematics that would enable higher levels of learning by American students resulted.

• States’ educators have been operating under student learning standards for years. In Arkansas, SLEs have been put together by large committees of educators in much the same way the Common Core standards were – referring to the learning standards from leading states like Massachusetts as well as cutting-edge education research in the subject area being addressed.

• Arkansas student learning standards, always approved by the State Board of Education before being taught, have been recognized for their quality, mainly because they did encourage higher levels of thinking across all subjects.

• The major complaint, especially from educators, about Arkansas student learning standards is that there are so darn many of them. It was hard to cover the broad scope of SLEs and still have time to teach well the more complex but most important concepts. (The Common Core, by the way, fixes that.)

So, it will be interesting to be at the Capitol on Saturday and hear what these “agginners” have to say. Our fear is that we’ll hear more in the way of scare tactics than facts. Either way, we’ll report back on Monday.

5 Reasons to Welcome Common Core

Public schools get underway this week, and with the new year comes an expansion of the Common Core curriculum into grades 3-8. Younger students got their first taste of the Common Core last year.

The Common Core State Standards is the college- and career-ready curriculum developed by national experts at the request of states via the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Forty-four states are using the Common Core.

The Democrat-Gazette's Cynthia Howell wrote an excellent story for Sunday's paper about how the Common Core is being implemented in Arkansas. In it are at least five reasons identified by state education officials, school district administrators and teachers that the Common Core is a good thing for Arkansas:

• The new standards will help ensure that Arkansas students are able to enter higher education without the need for remediation, according to Laura Bedner, assistant commissioner at the Arkansas Department of Education.  Pre-Common Core learning standards, both in Arkansas and across the country, have failed to do that.
• The concepts and skills our students are mastering match the concepts and skills students in the other 43 Common Core states are learning at the same grade level. This will be a big advantage for students as they seek success after high school, and it will enhance Arkansas's ability to create a workforce that attracts well-paying jobs to the state.
• The emphasis is on depth not breadth. As math teacher Stephanie Muckelburg told Howell: "We have so many Arkansas (curriculum) frameworks. It's kind of like we just skim the surface of them. With the Common Core, there are not as many standards and we can go deeper and teach students more about equations and how they are used in the real world and why they are going to need them."
• Students will use technology a lot more in their lessons. "We will be expanding our classrooms into the technology world," literacy director Karen James said.  The value of that is obvious.
• Students will master concepts through "doing."  As Linda Remele, a deputy superintendent for learning services put it, "This is all project-based learning. This is a differnt way. It is not stand and deliver and lecture -- not even in first grade."