Embracing the new Common Core Standards

by Jack Farrell

Trustee, Mammoth Unified School District

Teacher Researcher

The U.S. Department of Education just recently passed over California for Race to the Top funding. However, during the application process, California agreed to adopt the new Common Core Standards as commissioned by the National Governor’s Conference. These new standards are based on the College and Career Readiness Standards, which were an outgrowth of research by the ACT called “Reading Between the Lines.” I strongly urge districts across the state to embrace these new standards. Doing so will significantly improve the chances for success in both college and career for our future high school graduates.

It will be a mistake for educators to simply conclude that the state is exchanging one high set of standards for another. This will really be an issue of supervision and evaluation. Currently many school districts use the California Standards for the Teaching Profession as most, if not all, the criteria for teacher evaluation. From hundreds of hours of classroom observation I can confidently state that it is highly possible to witness most, if not all, the teaching standards in place and, yet, none of the new Common Core Standards to be in evidence. A teacher may present a well-managed classroom (Standard 2), have a high level of student engagement in the lesson (Standard 1), demonstrate mastery of his content (Standard 3), exhibit evidence of significant planning (Standard 4), check for understanding and assess student learning (Standard 5), and conduct himself in a highly professional manner (Standard 6). A majority of students may love his class and demonstrate significant learning. If this teacher links his lesson to the new standards instead of the California content standards, is he home free? Not necessarily.

What the university has discovered, as well as the employer in the new information age economy, is that this student is utterly unable to read complex college texts independently and with a satisfactory degree of comprehension. Nor is he able to navigate his job-training manual, business contracts or government regulations should he forego post-graduate education and proceed straight into the work force. This was the finding of the researchers at the ACT in 2005. From examining their reading test they discovered that students did fare well if the text was simple or merely challenging; however, if it was highly complex in nature, they failed, except for the very top students, those likely taking A.P or I.B. classes.

The introduction to the new standards asserts that the standards are merely about what to teach, not how to teach; those decisions are left up to the states. I find this somewhat misleading. Embedded within these standards is not only a call to revise our expectations and our textbooks, but a not so subtle recognition that what we are doing in the classroom no longer aligns with post-secondary success. The teaching standards place the teacher in the lead position in the classroom. He is in the content delivery business. Education is something ‘done’ to students.

This will not work with the new standards. The writers and readers of text will assume the center of the learning process. Text will not only rise in complexity in this new classroom, it will move forward in the lesson plan. Students will find themselves engaged in the silent reading and re-reading of highly challenging content area text, and they will be expected to engage with this text prior to any teacher support. The writer of the biology textbook will become at least as important as the teacher who will support this sacred and silent communication between writer and reader.

These new standards are not expected to be in place for some years: math by 2014 and English/Language Arts by 2016. In the meantime publishers will engage in significant textbook revision, committees will meet to write frameworks to accompany the new standards and the professional development of teachers and administrators will commence. No one who reads this article should wait, however. Let’s not fail the current cohort of students who eagerly anticipate college and career. I urge parents to monitor the amount and rigor of non-fiction reading in which your children are engaged. Hand them books of your own, but do not read to them if they are beyond 3^rd grade. Discuss the reading with them. Encourage your children’s teachers to increase the silent, independent reading of content area text in their classrooms and to distribute anchor texts to students to consume during transitions in the lesson.

How many more benefits will accrue to our current students, and how better prepared will our schools be, if we embrace these standards now and move toward their rapid implementation!