I have been trying to think of a way to explain Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for the longest time. I’m afraid I will not have much success either, and that is part of the problem for everyone. Here is my feeble attempt:
We have no national curriculum in the United States. Each state sets its own agenda, and we prefer to keep it that way. But we do have several national testing mechanisms that somewhat push states toward standardization: the National Assessment of Educational Progress and two college entrance exams, ACT and SAT, just to name a few.
If states want their independence, they have a hard time keeping it in education. So state boards of education and state superintendents started talking to one another to create some common core standards that they all could agree upon without the heavy federal hand of the U.S. Department of Education.
Language arts and math standards came first, soon to be followed by science and social studies. The standards are not a curriculum but a guideline of what state officials believe our students should be able to know and do. It is up to each state to determine how those standards will be met, and it gives us direction on just how states and organizations may wish to measure those standards.
The CCSS isn’t just a list of facts that students ought to know, although there is some factual information in the standards. The standards concentrate more on skills. Methods of teaching are more or less hinted at. For example, the CCSS calls for more reading of factual material and articles with less emphasis on fiction and poetry because contemporary life requires that we must get more information independent of teacher-directed instruction in this every changing world.
Needless to say, social values come into play. And that is one of the reasons Texas isn’t one of the 45 states that have signed on to the standards. CCSS recommends the reading of Black Boy by Richard Wright, who was a card carrying member of the Communist party in his younger days. Texas, a state that still requires the reading of works written by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, isn’t going to have any of that. Then you get into all that fun stuff on climate change and evolution.
Amazingly, all the other Southern states have signed on to the CCSS except Texas and Virginia. But that endorsement often comes from a state board or superintendent. Southern state legislatures are sending signals that they may not support their state education officials in the matter.
While CCSS comes from the collective input of state officials, critics of federal standards fear that the federal government may quickly adopt the CCSS as their own and impose the standards nationally. In Wisconsin, conservative State Representative Don Pridemore (R-Hartford) has announced he is running for Wisconsin State School Superintendent and takes issue with CCSS for this very reason.
Will the public rally behind or against the CCSS? Frankly, I don’t think that the public understands the concept well enough to get all fired up about the issue. While I support the standards, I still can’t figure out a way of easily communicating what they are to the public.
The link to the CCSS is here. I would like to find a simple explanation of CCSS by anyone. If there is no conversation, there will be no understanding. If there is no understanding, there will be no support. And if there is no support, CCSS will die. And I think that would be a shame.
