Diane Ravitch, a former Bush administration official who later turned away from the education reform movement, is one of the most prominent opponents from this line of thinking. She says she supports voluntary national standards in theory, but argues the Common Core standards are untested.
She also opposes raising standards so high that students cannot meet them. Standards are about what students should know or know how to do; curriculum is about how they're taught to know or do those things.
For example, the Common Core standards require second-graders to be able to contrast two versions of the same story. But teachers are free to pick what lesson plans are used to teach that skill, and states still pick what books are assigned for children to read.
Federal law prohibits the Education Department from interfering in curriculum, which is determined at the state and local level. However, the Common Core standards are very detailed. The second-grade standard on comparing stories includes an example, although schools aren't required to use it: How the Cinderella tale differs across cultures. Some critics say that this level of detail starts the United States down a slippery slope to a single, national curriculum. Most states that have adopted Common Core standards have also joined one of two groups, called consortia, that are creating new standardized tests.
Every state in each consortium will use the tests that consortium creates. The tests will measure how well students are doing at meeting Common Core standards in reading and math, which is meant to measure whether they'll be ready for college and careers by the end of high school.
States will continue to administer the tests at the end of the year, just as they do now. The federal government gave grants to two consortia to develop Common Core assessments. Both are nonprofit groups.
As pushback to the the Common Core increases, states are rolling back their commitment to the standard by saying they'll write their own tests rather than use the tests the two consortia create.
It's a way to pull back without getting rid of the standards themselves. Some Common Core supporters are worried about that, because if states are writing their own tests, it's easy for them to define proficiency however they want — which would undercut the benefit of common standards.
Not all that well. So far, only two states, New York and Kentucky, have given their students tests on how well they're meeting Common Core standards. They're still using their own tests, not the tests that the two consortia of states are developing. Those tests just started field testing in spring and won't be in action until the school year. Scores dropped off a cliff in both states. In New York , fewer than one-third of all public school students passed state assessments once they were aligned to the Common Core.
Before the new standards, more than half of all students passed the tests. Kentucky also saw a big drop. When the state first used Common Core assessments, the percentage of students passing dropped by more than one-third. Scores went from hovering around 70 to 80 percent to less than 50 percent. Supporters say the new standards are supposed to be hard. The low scores are a feature, not a bug. But unions are worried about the consequences for teachers if their students don't do well on the new tests, and are saying states should slow down on putting that part of the Common Core in action.
In all, 43 states currently have Common Core standards. The process for signing on has varied based on state law, but in most states, the state board of education had to vote in favor of the new standards. In other states, the state Education Department was able to make the decision on its own. Source: CoreStandards. Indiana wrote its own standards to replace the Common Core and adopted them March 24 after a tide of grassroots opposition.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill to get rid of the standards in June. Mostly, though Common Core rollback enacted so far has been about the tests — not about the standards. Several states have decided to write their own tests instead of participating in the two state consortia that are writing shared assessments. They're concerned about the cost of the new tests, or they're sensitive to concerns from critics from the Tea Party, and are scaling back their Common Core commitments.
Quite a lot. The Common Core is supposed to make sure that students show up for college ready for college-level work. That's rarer than you might think. More than half of all students at community colleges, and more than 20 percent at four-year college, need remedial classes. A big part of the Common Core's success will rely on getting college faculty and administrators to agree that students who meet the standards really are college-ready.
Getting higher education on board with K standards was a requirement for states participating in the Education Department's competitive grant program , Race to the Top.
There's early evidence in Kentucky that the college-readiness component is working. Kentucky is the Common Core poster child because it was early to implementing the new standards. The percentage of students who needed remedial courses in math has dropped by 38 percent since In language arts, it's an even more dramatic change: half as many students need remedial courses as they did five years ago. A Common Core test will even be used for college admission — sort of.
Like the Common Core, it will focus more on evidence-based arguments, and it will ask students to deal with fewer math questions but in more depth. This is very much a work in progress. It will continue to be updated as events unfold, new research gets published, and fresh questions emerge.
So if you have additional questions or comments or quibbles or complaints, send a note to Libby Nelson: libby vox. The full implementation of the Common Core State Standards has come and gone, but its true impact on schools and education as a whole may still not be known for several years. Certainly, the shift to a national set of standards has been revolutionary and highly controversial. They have been debated and well discussed, and a handful of states once committed to the standards have recanted to go in a different direction.
As the media continues to evaluate the significance of the Common Core and data from Common Core states begin to pour in, you can bet the debate will rage on. In the meantime, let's examine several of the pros and cons of the Common Core Standards that will continue to lead the debate.
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Cite evidence instead of personal experience: In the past, it was more common for students to write a paper based on their personal experience. The Common Core changed this. It requires that students use evidence in texts to argue, speak and write.
For instance, if a student is writing a paper on immigration, he must cite news articles, rather than rely on personal feelings. Read more nonfiction texts: The Common Core has a bigger emphasis on nonfiction texts than previous standards. For instance, in grade school, the standards require a split between fiction and nonfiction. Focus on fewer math concepts: Previous state standards often required students to cover many different math concepts, but without a lot of depth.
The Common Core covers fewer math topics. However, the expectation is that students will work more deeply on those topics. Build on previously learned math concepts: In the Common Core, math concepts build on one another. What a student learns in fourth grade must be applied in fifth grade, and so on. Students are expected to have a global view of math, not just understand individual topics.
Show more understanding of math concepts: Many previous state math standards focused on simply knowing the right steps to get the right answer to a math problem. For instance, students had to learn a standard way to do long division. Common Core expands the focus to requiring students to show understanding of the concepts. Common Core can be a controversial topic. Here are some of the reasons why some parents and educators oppose the standards. Keeping local control over schools: Some critics say the Common Core takes away local control over schools.
Because the standards are uniform, they fear states may lose the ability to set standards for schools. However, Common Core is a state-led, not federal, initiative. States are free to reject Common Core and many have done so. Even if a state adopts Common Core, it can still decide what curriculum and educational programs to use. They say students are expected to do far more at younger ages than in the past. This criticism applies to many state academic standards, however, not just Common Core.
And many believe high expectations help prepare kids to succeed as adults.
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