Educate me on your take on Common Core.

[AllFieldsRequired]

Do we have any TEACHERS here? I am interested in Common Core and your take...

A friend of mine, teacher, is visiting.

She is extremely intelligent and trying to explain to me what Common Core is and why the way it is being implemented is the problem, not that the system itself is a problem.

She says that expecting high school students to all of a sudden take on Common Core approaches to learning makes no sense, that it should be rolled out starting only at the beginning (kindergarten and up)

But she likes the Common Core method, teaching critical thinking, etc.

I am interested in what teachers who are dealing with this think.

[d_r]

1. supposedly

common core is only the standards not the teaching method.

[digonswine]

2. There is no way to go into it in great detail here--

There is a general trend toward teaching kids "how" to think--with less of a focus on pure content. The techniques are fairly well backed up by research-though much is yet to be done.

Start with searches for inquiry-based learning, understanding by design, and other such concepts.

These are not feel-good, let kids decide types of techniques. They are very complicated and will take much time to implement. In fact, putting those and active learning strategies and retrieval-based techniques into practice is nearly impossible for an individual teacher to do well.

Your friend is right--it needs to start early--it will also take teachers MANY years to get good at this-even if they are trained in the newer techniques early.

Yes-I am a teacher, and yes I am dealing with this now. And--yes--it will take me much time to become great at something no one has yet to perfect. The idea is to get better and to continue to improve.

[LWolf]

3. Here.

"Common Core" is a set of standards. It's what you do with those standards that count, for the good or the ill.

The Common Core standards have some elements that lend them to inquiry based teaching methods...which I fully support. There is an emphasis on thinking, which I fully support. Personally, I'd prefer going back to the "frameworks" that used to organize curriculum before the "standards and accountability" movement started issuing too-long laundry lists of isolated skills and calling them "standards." But that's just me. The CCSS are not the problem. High stakes testing of those standards...that's the problem.

I don't support, in any fashion, high-stakes testing of any set of standards, including Common Core, and that is at the "core" of the controversy.

When high stakes testing is in force, it's the high-stakes test that drives instruction, and the authoritarian control of how that happens.