There’s a lot of hysteria around the Common Core these days. Power grab on the part of the feds, yet another volley in the standardization wars, one more step towards dismantling public education and privatizing everything…
You get the idea- and apparently so do the folks at the CCSSO since they put on their Snopes.com hats to create a whole page of myths vs. facts.
But here’s the thing: I’m not so sure we’re not overreacting. Not that we don’t have precedent- a lot of the stuff coming at educators these days is certainly hysteria-worthy. We’re under fire, no doubt about it, but I think our adrenaline-soaked brains may be perceiving a threat in something that could be a gift and while the CCSS may not be perfect, they also aren’t necessarily the end of the world.
The CCSS don’t tell us how to teach, they guide content. They set very general goals for all students but the “how?” That’s up to us- and the “what” sounds an awful lot like the sort of thing that Critical Skills teachers should welcome with open arms- Discuss, analyze, evaluate, integrate, compare, contrast…I can see where wise educators could get from them Common Core to this or this or this.
Sounds good to me. And apparently to
These folks at Edweek
and Doug Reeves
What about you?
The Critical Skills Classroom 