The Common Core Has its Hand in Your Pocket

Imagine you are the principal of a school. One day you hear about this new thing called the Common Core (CCSS). You’re a busy person. You haven’t time to read the endless articles about CCSS but you attend enough meetings to learn that this new system is supposed to revolutionize education. Everything you read says that your school must quickly learn this new system; failing to prepare could lead to a catastrophe. The rhetoric is extreme. “Many say the standards will enable {us} to finally do what {we} envisioned when {we} first got into teaching: get students excited about learning.” "The common core will make every graduate college and career-ready.” Even the politicians who oppose CCSS accept the assumption that the Core will be more challenging that what we have now. The Governor of California, a man I greatly respect for his good sense, has allocated ONE BILLION dollars of his upcoming budget for CCSS preparation. Any sensible leader would want to make sure his or her school was ready to participate in this new revolution. That means spending money. Every day you, the principal, get mail, electronic and the snail variety offering ways for you to spend the school’s cash on CCSS. Here is a new textbook “aligned” with Common Core. Here are the hip new things, webinars, which will clue you into this new secret society without necessitating that you leave your office. Here are the new computers you’ll need since the testing for the Core will be done online. Here are experts with inside knowledge who can train your teachers. It feels as if an educational tsunami is headed our way. What are the chances that I, a nondescript teacher with no real policy credentials could convince you that it’s all a smoke screen? The Common Core is a false god. The Emperor is not wearing any clothes. Even defenders will concede that the Common Core is just a list things that kids should know at each grade level. Their skills lists are short with far fewer standards than the old California compilation that we use now. True believers make a big deal out of this reduction in standards. Now we can teach fewer things in greater depth, they say. Hogwash. The one thing you will never read about the Core is a detailed explanation of just how my lessons will change. I’ve read over five hundred articles about CCSS. A few describe classrooms where the teachers are adapting to this new world. Remarkably, the new world, when it is described, is strangely similar to the present world, and the past world. No one has suddenly discovered a new way to teach. It they found such things they would be remiss by not immediately publishing articles about it so we all could copy these new miracles. The only true new aspect of CCSS is the testing which will be done on computers. Advocates insist that the CCSS has inspired them to get kids thinking. They reveal their new teaching methodology as if Moses had just come down and revealed it to them. Now students will realize the “why” behind those boring yes-no answers kids have been enduring for generations. You know what? Teachers try to get kids to think now. I have observed teachers who focused their lessons on a small number of standards so that kids would have a deep understanding of that concept. They didn’t need CCSS to tell them to do that. There is nothing new about the Common Core except that the tests will have more essays and fewer multiple-choice questions--and that you poor suckers are going to be forking over billions of dollars so that we teachers can pretend we are learning something revolutionary.