If there's
anything more surprising than how quickly and calmly 45 states embraced the new
Common Core curriculum standards, it's how quickly and contentiously the
backlash erupted.
The
standards, which California adopted in 2010, outline the skills and knowledge
public school students should acquire in each grade from kindergarten through
high school. Overall, they call for covering fewer topics, but covering each
more deeply. They require students to think their way through math problems,
rather than taking so much direct instruction from teachers. More careful
reading is another part of the standards, along with the reading of more
nonfiction. Students do more analysis and a lot more writing.
But almost
as soon as the new standards got underway — most California schools began
teaching the related curriculum this year — the coalition began to shred. Tea
party conservatives claimed that the standards were being pushed too
assiduously by the federal government, intruding on the states' authority to
set curriculum. There's some justification for that argument. The Obama
administration demanded higher academic standards from states that wanted
federal grants or some freedom from the onerous No Child Left Behind law;
though the Common Core standards were developed under the aegis of the National
Governors Assn. and adopted by states voluntarily, it was known that embracing
them would increase a state's chances of federal beneficence.
There's also
a pragmatic motivation behind conservative opposition to Common Core: Its
success would represent a political victory for the administration.
Backlash has
also come from parents and teachers' unions, who rightly argue that the
standards have been implemented hastily and sloppily in too many states. They
have legitimate worries that schools and teachers will be held responsible for
student performance on standardized tests even as they try to work out the
kinks in a dramatically new set of expectations. Researchers recently reported
that, so far, there are no textbooks that are truly aligned with Common Core
standards.
Several
state legislatures are now pushing back. Bills in Georgia and Wyoming call for
reviewing the standards with a possible eye to junking them; legislation in
Wisconsin and Alabama would repeal Common Core altogether. New York is delaying
full implementation after a rushed and botched start. At the federal level,
Republican legislators have introduced bills and a resolution that would scold
the administration for pushing the standards, and bar any use of federal grants
or regulatory favors as a reward for adopting them.
What gets
lost amid the political and administrative squabbling is the issue that ought
to matter most: whether the Common Core standards are a solid improvement on
what most states, including California, had before. And with a few caveats,
they are. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics praises them for
following a more logical track in building math skills. The standards are also
more closely aligned with how the top-scoring nations in international tests
teach math. Educators are pleased that students will do more writing under the
standards; colleges have long complained about the poor writing skills of
incoming students.
California's
old curriculum standards were particularly well known for being a mile wide and
an inch deep. Here's one small example: In the middle of second grade, students
were taught about obtuse and acute angles even though they had no geometry
background to understand the concept. Although they didn't know what a right
angle was or how many degrees it had, they would do a few work sheets and then
drop the subject for several years.
The Common
Core standards eliminate that sort of nonsense and build, from the earliest
years, understanding of topics that now befuddle many students, such as
multiplying and dividing fractions. In kindergarten, they might start very
simply: folding paper in half, and in half again.
Criticism of
Common Core — of the standards themselves, not the politics or implementation —
focuses on a few areas. One is that while in many states, including California,
most students are supposed to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade, under the new
standards most take that or an equivalent course as high school freshmen. That
gives them no time to reach calculus in high school, though advanced students
may follow an accelerated course of study that allows it. If any group ought to
be worried about that, it would be mathematicians. Yet the Mathematical Assn.
of America says it isn't a problem. It's more important, a spokesman said, for
students to get a deeper understanding of what they're being taught; and
besides, the idea that a high school education must include calculus is
outmoded.
