From chapter 4: The Common Core Conundrum
[with asides not contained in the book]

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What is Common Core?   (pp. 37-40)

Common Core is a set of standards that pushes kids faster than previously, in their elementary education particularly.  
     It flies in the face of individualized instruction, which promotes meeting a child where his developmental stage indicates he is ready. It also contradicts the philosophy of a democratic society: the idea that people get to choose their own path in life. Common Core dictates advanced concepts as early as kindergarten, when students are expected to understand place value in a base ten system, and third grade, when students begin their foray into multiplication, division, fractions, and algebraic expressions, and write analyses of character development in books like Charlotte’s Web. It appears to presume that all students are gifted and should be prepped for graduate school starting at a young age.

     In my research for this book, I found the following statement, written by Susi An and Adriana Cardona-Maguigad for NPR station WBEZ in Chicago:

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“Common Core is not a curriculum, rather it's a set of detailed expectations for what content and skills students should master at each grade level. The goal is to dig deep into topics rather than scratch the surface on a broad range of content.”

  
     Isn’t that what a curriculum is?  The content and skills students should master at each grade level?  Common Core does provide that set of skills from which everything else is derived: textbooks, tests, and individual school district curricula. You can see it on their own website, CoreStandards.org.
     And yes, the goal is to dig deep into topics. In fifth grade, for instance, math students are expected to “solve real world problems involving multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers…by using visual fraction models or equations to represent the problem.”    A current fifth grade math workbook contains the following problem, inspired by this expectation:

Josie sold 3/7 of all the ears of corn she brought to the market in the morning and 2/3 of

the remaining ears of corn in the afternoon. She sold 255 ears of corn in all.  She donated

the leftover ears of corn to the food bank.  How many ears of corn did she donate to the

food bank?  

     If your fifth grader is getting questions like this in his school workbook, you know he is also getting questions like this on your state’s standardized test.  When you receive a report that his proficiency level on that test is mid-range or low, how seriously are you going to take the results?  Even elementary school teachers, for the most part, cannot answer this question without guidance from the teacher’s manual.  
     This material, prior to 2010, was first taught in middle school, when teachers begin to specialize in a single subject, like math. Not in elementary school. Students are now taught equivalent fractions in third grade (which means GCF and LCM)  and decimal/fraction comparisons in fourth.  By sixth grade, students should be solving problems like this: 

Create a story context for (2/3) ÷ (3/4) and use a visual fraction model to show the quotient;

use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9

because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3.5.  

     A story context means students write their own word problem.  Yes, this is rigor.  No, it should not be considered typical sixth grade material.
     It is a major leap to require students to write their own “story context” from the information presented in that problem.  (And the only way the problem makes sense at all is if reciprocal fractions make sense to the student.)   To be sure, some students will demonstrate readiness for this, and they should be placed in classes with other learners of a similar ilk. But to require all sixth graders to understand and demonstrate mastery of fractions and their reciprocals to the extent that they could complete the problem above [independently] is unrealistic and sets many students up for failure.  

     [Teachers who question the validity of this type of ‘rigor’ are lambasted mercilessly by their principals for trying to “dumb down” learning standards.   It’s a delicate balance we maintain in education: pushing children to their intellectual limits while also being realistic about what those limits are, developmentally.  In my experience with common core materials over the last ten years, I have met fewer than twenty students who had the patience, knowledge, and tenacity to tackle this problem successfully on their own.  And that is the crux of the matter: on their own.  This is what testing requires, but classroom situations most often involve the teacher assigning something and then showing how it should have been worked after most children fail at it.  Of course, this is all after instruction and modeling have already occurred.]

 
A major fall-out from instituting these advanced standards across the board
is that many students are resisting the push toward 
faster and more in-depth learning.

     Nothing is riding on their engagement in the program, so they opt out because it is easier than pushing themselves beyond their comfort level.  Most students don't care whether they do well on the state tests that were developed using the core standards. They are not compelled to care. 
     Teachers, however, do obsess over these tests because they must. It has become an ongoing conundrum in education: how to make students want to learn material that is either too difficult for them or uninteresting to them. Telling a child that he needs to know material he is not ready to learn leads to dismal results. Instead, we should observe the natural development of children in grades K-5 and sort them into the groups (classes) that will benefit them the most. Some will land in those Common Core classes because they are advanced thinkers. Others will not. That is the way things work developmentally.

     [It is difficult to believe that the powers-that-be continue to resist connecting the dots on the disconnect between expectation and performance.  For teachers in the classroom, it is obvious that most of their students cannot be proficient, independently, at the grade-level Common Core standards.  Yet very few teachers are willing to go against the current grain of thinking: that if we continue to plug away at it, our students will come to the table. That old adage about insanity comes to mind!  We keep doing the same thing...over and over...and hoping for a different result, even while knowing it will never happen.]

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     Teaching all students at a similar age the same advanced material regardless of their readiness and holding them all accountable for learning objectives that are not doable for some frustrates everyone in the program.

     If we are patient, and we offer supports and differentiated instruction, students will understand the material when they are ready to understand it.  There is also the aspect of effort to consider.  How much is a student willing to push himself? When students are counseled about the choices they are making and then placed in classes according to those choices, their education will mean more to them.
     This is why there should be leveled classes all along the path toward high school graduation and diligent adults watching for student readiness.  

     Common Core proponents claim their program is for College and Career Readiness. The standards requiring all students to write and graph linear, quadratic, and exponential functions belie that.

     (I urge you to explore the Math Standards at CoreStandards.org for a full picture of the math prowess we are now requiring from all high school students. )

     Career readiness cannot be neatly defined using one brush stroke. High schoolers are not stupid; just because we insist on a certain path for them, regardless of their dreams or abilities, doesn’t mean they’re going to buy into our plan. What it means is that they will gradually put less and less stock in what the power structure says, even to their own detriment. Pushing students toward a goal that means little to them is futile.
     Middle school programs should begin the process of counseling students to determine what they imagine their path in life will be and then tracking kids toward those goals through placement in realistic (and appropriately challenging) classes that meet their needs. If we have already begun ability grouping in elementary school, this will be even more seamless.
     Insisting that all students travel an advanced path through high school graduation encourages cynicism in our young people and chaos for them as they contemplate their future.