Understanding Common Core

"Common Core is a plot by communists to turn my kid gay and put dirty illegal Mexicans under my bed!!!" Not quite. Colorado adopted Common Core some time ago and my kids have been in it for two years now. I have seen what it does, how it works and how it doesn't. Let me explain what Common Core is, what it does right and what it does wrong.

Let's start by stating what Common Core is NOT. Common core is not a conspiracy against Jesus. It is not radical Islam's nose under the tent. It does not suggest atheism. It is not a socialist conspiracy. It has nothing to do with gays. Indeed, it has no political, religious or anti-religious content. It was not kept secret from the public; you can actually see it online any time you want. In fact, none of the conspiracy theories pimped by people like Glenn Beck and Drudge are true... and they know that.

So what is it?

Common Core is a program developed by a large number of experts with the intent of creating national minimum standards that every state should meet. This is actually a conservative idea we've argued for for years: that American education needs standards (or better standards) and testing to confirm that children are satisfying those standards. Indeed, conservatives should be jumping for joy. But you know...

Anyways, what these experts created was a thorough, yet bare-boned curriculum intended for K-12. It is thorough in the sense that it outlines the specific areas of learning, concepts and skills that children should learn at each grade level. In this regard, it covers everything. It is not just wishful thinking: "Wouldn't it be nice if our kids were smart by fourth grade?" Instead, it provides a long list of requirements students should be able to meet at each grade level. At the same time, however (and this is key), it is also bare bones. This means that while it lists skills the students should be able to master, it does so without providing details on how that should be done. In other words, Common Core outlines key ideas and concepts that should be introduced at each grade level but it does not explain how those concepts should be taught. For example, a fifth grader might be required to write a five paragraph essay, but it does not state what topic those essays should be about nor does it prescribe a method for making them write the essay. In some areas, it does offer suggestions, like listing examples of books they might read, but those are only examples. They are not part of the curriculum.

That is Common Core.

Now, that said, there is another level to Common Core. Once Common Core got adopted by the individual states, it was up to the states themselves to fill in the blanks. In other words, Common Core gave them a long list of requirements, but it was up to the states to figure out how to teach students to satisfy those requirements. Most states took their existing educations plans and simply upgraded them to add the new Common Core requirements. In the end though, most of what happened was that these bare-bones requirements were simply pushed down to the school/class level and the teachers were told, "Here's what your kids need to be able to do, go figure it out yourself."

So consider this for a moment. If you had been told: "Common Core is a new set of minimum standards which are more strict than what is currently taught in 40+ states. It works by giving teachers a list of 8-10 math/English skills the kids in their class must be able to meet. And then kids will be tested periodically to ensure they are meeting the standards." Would that have bothered you? I doubt it.

So where do the complaints of Beck and Drudge and these other scaremongers come from? Well, when you see a Drudge headline about some school doing something pro-Islam, pro-gay or pro-whatever, those are decisions made by individual teachers or school administrators. They do not spring from Common Core. And the fact that they are happening in single classrooms only rather than district-wide, state-wide or nation-wide should prove that.

Anyways, there is one problem with Common Core. Testing and standards are a conservative idea. To give liberals something, Common Core was based on the idea of... let's call it mental diversity. The idea is this: "not all kids learn the same way. So rather than force all kids to learn one method, let's teach multiple methods and let the kids pick the one or two that work for them." That's what liberals got, and honestly, I think that's a good idea. For one thing, it is true that people learn differently. And if two kids need to use different methods to perform the same skill, what sense does it make to force them both to use the same method? Further, learning different methods is likely to give kids a bigger picture of what they are doing, so that their understanding of each skill will be both deeper and more broad. That's a good thing too. So I have no problem with this either and I'm not sure why anyone would?

But this is also where the real problem has arisen.

The problem is this. Rather than making sure that each method taught is a good method, the people who got into the nitty gritty proved to be idiots. In particular, a lot of states are using a guidebook designed by "experts" in New York. These morons included every method they could think of in their guidebook whether they were good methods or not. Hence, when students are taught from this guidebook, they are taught tried and true methods, they are taught secondary methods that take more time but are probably easier for some kids, and they get taught methods that make no f***ing sense whatsoever. This last category is responsible for the periodic posts you see online where parents complain that they don't understand their kids' homework and can't help them.

It's important to understand, however, that these nonsense methods are in addition to the good ones -- they do not replace the good ones.

I can tell you from personal experience that we've run into some of these. Indeed, some of the problems we've run into include the use of methods that make no sense, methods that require you to know the answer to work the problem, and methods that absorb a vast amount of time to reach an answer that could be gotten in seconds using any other method. Fortunately, the idea behind Common Core is that once the child has learned these methods, they are free to choose whichever method works best for them. Hence, we have guided our daughters to the traditional methods that work best and we tell them to forget the stupid methods. Their teachers seem to do the same.

In any event, this issue could be remedied by removing the idiotic methods from the guidebook without changing the rest.

So let me sum this up. Common Core has no political content. It is about education skills. At the level of "Common Core" (the federal level), it's actually a total victory for conservatives. At the state level, it did little more than force states to raise their standards, but left them free to decide how to achieve those standards. At the classroom level, Common Core is doing what it is supposed to do -- it has raised standards and thereby improved the quality of education -- but with a caveat. The caveat is that it also wastes some time teaching some nonsense methods which students disregard.

That is Common Core.