Four Reasons Common Core Should Stay

"When I was in kindergarten I ate glue."

Many people in my circle of friends hold a negative view of the Common Core State Standards. While I respect differences of opinion, I feel compelled to offer my thoughts on why I support the Common Core State Standards. As an educator, and as a parent, I have a unique interest in the shift to the new standards. As the Curriculum Director for my school district, the last year of my professional life has been spent wrestling with the standards in fairly intense ways. I believe I know what the standards are, and I believe I know what they are not.

Here are four reasons I support the standards.
1.) Standards vs. Curriculum: The difference between standards and curriculum is important. Standards refer to specific content and skills. A curriculum details how those standards are taught. CCSS does not mandate how the content knowledge and skills should be taught. Such decisions are left to teachers and leaders at the local level. While many criticisms I see focus on perceived weakness of a curriculum from an anonymous or distant school, I see few criticism of specific standards.  Criticizing specific standards amounts to saying students should not be required to memorize multiplication tables, or spell words correctly.

multiplication standard
spelling standard

2.) The Value of Clarity: One value of the Common Core State Standards is that they are clearly written, and compared to other sets of standards I have seen, they are fairly limited in scope. In thirty minutes a person could read all of the standards for their child's grade in mathematics. The language arts standards could be read in an additional thirty.

mathematics standards
English language arts standards

I will be the first to admit that I have reservations about the role of standardized testing in America. Many attempts to hold schools accountable seem misguided to me. However, if we must have tests, it is only fair to our students and teachers to have clear standards for what is to be tested.

3.) Effects of Disruption: The Common Core State Standards have been influencing educators since they were first introduced by Republican governors in 2009. Teachers have expended tremendous amounts of effort aligning curriculum and assessments to the standards. If political leaders were to force an abandonment of the standards now, for reasons having much more to do with political strategy than regard for students, the efforts of those teachers would have been wasted. The disruption would be compounded further because most opponents of the core have no suggestion for replacement standards. The disruption would negatively impact students.

4.) Benefits for Kids: One final reason, perhaps the most important reason, why I support the Common Core State Standards is that I believe the new standards can be good for kids. The new standards are more rigorous, but our kids will benefit from being challenged to engage in a greater complexity of thought. I'll close with examples of two specific students, a kindergartner and a fourth grader.

In a recent professional development session I led, I used a video of a kindergartner reading a paragraph she wrote explaining why she would choose to have Bengal tiger teeth, if she had to have animal teeth. When I was in kindergarten I ate glue and slept on a mat. Now students are writing paragraphs. This is a direct response to this standard.

The fourth grader wrote a multi-page essay about Scott Joplin. The essay was typed and distributed digitally to her father, who was proud. The length of the essay was a response to this standard.

The technological component to the assignment was a response to this standard.

That fourth grader is my daughter, Laney. The Common Core State Standards, taught by a truly talented teacher forced her to stretch and grow.

Before doing anything to disrupt that kind of experience, we should all pause.

Troy