A reader recently commented on my blog post, "What's Wrong With the Common Core," and I've decided to post a response because his point is so often repeated by supporters of the Common Core Stare Standards Initiative.
His comment refuted my claim that Common Standards push a Common Curriculum. He wrote, "National standards do NOT require a national curriculum. Study the CCSS and you will find for the most part skills and abilities outlined. In the area of language arts, for example, challenging writing skills are outlined. Whether a student in Oregon demonstrates these skills by writing a paper on arguing the validity of MLK assertions in his Birmingham jail letters or whether a student in Illinois writes similarly while studying women's rights, much freedom remains in the curriculum for how the challenging skills are acquired. Currently, I see the CCSS as standards which are challenging educators and students to move to high levels of universally recognized skill levels."
To defend my position that CCSS will lead to a Common Curriculum I would like to share a few logical real life examples of my own.
I often speak to teachers about education policy and how it translates into the everyday classroom. While speaking recently to a 6th grade English teacher (living in Maryland, a state who has fully implemented the Common Core) she expressed her immediate dislike of the changes made to the curriculum in her classroom since the state implemented the new ELA standards. Her chief concern was the decrease in literature and the increased focus on non-fiction reading which she says has made it more difficult to motivate reluctant readers and has shifted student writing skills to favor technical writing styles over creative writing.
This curriculum change is directly related to the Common Core State Standards and what unelected boards believed was "relevant to real life". While it is true what defenders of the Common Core say, the standards don't dictate this book over that, they certainly dictate that all schools de-emphasize literature regardless of what individual students, teachers, or schools feel is best in building strong readers and writers.
Another example of how the Common Core is pushing a national curriculum can be found in the uniform reports of parents in states who have adopted Common Core Math (reports you can read if you join education social media groups). These descriptions reflect an immediate and distinctive change in the curriculum and instructional methods used to teach math especially to the early elementary students.
This account is from a personal friend but her account echoes dozens of similar accounts from parents coast to coast: "He was coming home with this insane math that didn't actually teach him much about how to solve the problems. He COULD solve the problems using the methods they taught, but in the time it took him to answer ONE question FIVE different ways, he could've answered so many more! I had NO idea how to help him solve the problems, so if he got stuck, I'd have no idea how to help."
Need more evidence of how common standards push a common curriculum that will permeate every corner of your local school? Just do an Internet search for Common Core teacher helps and Common Core curriculum models. There are thousands of training videos for teachers to help them integrate Common Core into their curriculums and instruction methods. Achieve, the private company who published the Common Core has received federal grants to begin producing curriculum models for alignment.
Need more evidence? Read the market news reports for Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Saxon. Nearly all producers of curriculum and text books have already or are rapidly aligning their material to Common Core. This is widely discussed among Homeschool groups nationwide.
These companies are ecstatic about these national standards because it will mean producing one text book for every grade and subject instead of catering to schools on a state by state basis. The business model alone is proof that we will have a Common Curriculum as a result of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Former Maryland state Superintendent, Nancy Grasmick stated that the Common Core is a "national curriculum... No longer are education initiatives developed state by state, but in a model similar to European countries." Nancy Grasmick now works as a prominent professor at Towson University, a renown teachers collage, where she was appointed a Presidential Scholar for Innovation in Teacher and Leader Education. Her job is to orchestrate a "broad overhaul of the programs at the university" that will train teachers in Common Core alignment. She has spoken openly about how Common Core will fundamentally shape education and her role in reshaping teaching methodology to align with Common Core.
While it certainly is true that curriculum is taught with variation classroom to classroom and that children will differ in the books they read or the subjects they choose to write a report on, it is equally true that text books will become uniform throughout the country and teachers will be commonly trained to administer a common curriculum. Further, universities will align the education they give their aspiring teachers to reflect the methodologies of the Common Core State Standards.
I just don't see how people defending the Common Core can make a logical argument that standards don't drive curriculum. They certainly shape the test, and of course it naturally follows that in order to perform well on the test the curriculum must be tailored to the standards. To deny the real tangible connection between standards, testing, and curriculum -- and of greater impact the standardization of teacher training and methodology -- is a disingenuous argument at best, and manipulative at worst.
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