What's So Bad About the Common Core?

Three years ago I was invited to be in the audience for NBC's first Education Nation extravaganza.  For the most part it was scripted ho-hum. But, by chance, I wound up sitting next to and had the chance to chat with Jason Zimba, one of the lead authors of the Common Core State Standards.

Back in those days CCSS was just a dream for me. The notion of agreement across most of the US on a rigorous set of standards, broken down clearly by grade level seemed so commonsensical as to be a no-brainer. Who could object to having high expectations for the students of our country?

At that point, I had already been teaching for six years, and I had seen wave after wave of 9th graders come into my school lacking in skills that I associate with elementary math (e.g. fractions, measurement, multiplication tables). I'd been on grading committees for dozens of Regents Exams for which New York State decided that a 35% was passing grade. In the effort to out-Wobegon Lake Wobegon, it seemed the passing criteria had been watered and watered and watered so all the students could be above the redefined "average."

With that background I was excited about the ideas behind CCSS. Specifically, "a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn" that are "robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers." (see CCSS Mission Statement) I was sure it would decrease the chances I'd get students whose 8th grade test results showed them "significantly above grade level" only to find that they can't work with signed numbers, as was frequently the case with the then current NY Standards. Obviously, common rigorous standards are a good thing for me, as a teacher, and us, as a nation, and us, as a global community.

My rant today is prompted by the surprising number of criticisms I'm seeing directed at CCSS (or Common Core Learning Standards, CCLS, as they're called in New York) coming from educators! What? Just yesterday a friend posted a reductio ad Hitlerum video, as though to say rigorous common standards must be bad because they claim Hitler would have liked them. (no, I'm not going to link that video, because I find that sort of fallacious argument personally offensive) There was an uproar when New York published the results of last year's 8th grade testing, which showed that 70% of students had not mastered the basic foundation for 9th grade mathematics. That was no surprise for me, since I see that year after year in my incoming 9th graders.

But the surprise is that otherwise reasonable people think the solution is to ease up on the standards. No! That was the problem in the first place. The standards are good, and the test scores seem to reflect reality. I'm sorry if you don't like reality, but pretending that unprepared students have a good quantitative foundation doesn't help anybody in the long run.

We've got some good standards. Better than 90% of the US has accepted these standards. Now let's apply them rationally and consistently, and work with reality.