Critical to find common ground on Common Core

by Matt Ellinwood, NC Policy Watch, June 16, 2014.

State lawmakers are quickly advancing legislation during the current legislative session to repeal North Carolina’s previous adoption of the Common Core Standards in education.

Unfortunately, the debate on the subject has generated a lot more heat than light. Rather than focusing on the practical, in-classroom impact of raising standards, many lawmakers have fallen victim to the widespread campaign of misinformation that has sprung up around the Common Core.

This is unfortunate, because there may actually be some important common ground on the subject that could lead to a productive outcome for our schools.

Under the proposals currently moving through the legislature, North Carolina would establish a new “Academic Standards Review Commission” and task the new group with conducting a comprehensive review of state standards in English and math – a responsibility that is constitutionally assigned to the State Board of Education. Though largely unnecessary, this does not have to be a destructive, start-over-once-again-from-scratch exercise.

The key is to avoid massive disruption and uncertainty in the classroom and the potential for backsliding by modifying and improving Common Core Standards rather than simply abandoning them.

Unfortunately, the proposed legislation puts the immediate future of our state’s academic standards in doubt. The bills prohibit the State Board of Education from continuing to participate in the development of the Common Core State Standards or implementing the assessments that the State Board deems most appropriate to assess student achievement on the Common Core. At the same time, the bill keeps the Common Core Standards in place until a new set of standards is adopted by the State Board of Education following the receipt of the Commission’s recommendations.

In other words, North Carolina will continue to move forward with the Common Core Standards but the state may be prohibited from revising or implementing assessments or offering professional development and training for teachers and administrators who are responsible for educating students to these standards.

Despite the unpopularity of Common Core in some circles, the simple truth is that the standards are more rigorous, raise expectations and student achievement, and provide a clearer set of standards than the North Carolina Standard Course of Study that was in place prior to their adoption.

Under the old system, students were deemed “proficient” based on lower standards even though they needed intensive remediation to become college or career ready. Under the Common Core Standards, students who meet the proficiency benchmark will be truly college and career ready. The Common Core Standards are also aligned with international testing benchmarks.

The current school year is the first year that the Common Core Standards have been fully in place and there have been some expected implementation difficulties that accompany this type of large scale change. Teachers need time, professional development, and the benefit of experience to tailor curricula to the Common Core’s higher standards. These standards should be revised and made even more rigorous over the next 3-5 years, not abandoned and replaced with an entirely new set of standards or North Carolina’s schools, teachers, and students will face further uncertainty, expense, and implementation challenges.

The Common Core is not a set curriculum but rather a set of standards that raises the expectations we have for our students while allowing teachers to have the flexibility to teach creative problem solving and analytical thinking. High standards and expectations for students raise student achievement. All of the countries that are outperforming the United States on international assessments have a clear set of high standards for their students. Massachusetts aggressively raised its standards in the 1990s and is now the highest performing state on national assessments. It is also the only state that regularly out-competes the highest performing nations in the world on international benchmarking tests.

During the public hearing on Common Core, teachers like Karen Dickerson, a Guilford County English teacher and 2013 Teacher of the Year, said Common Core allowed her to dive more deeply into topics with all of her students, particularly those that had been struggling: “We are simply raising the floor or baseline for what they must achieve, so the ceiling can reach limitless heights.”

Raising standards and expectations for students is a monumental challenge, but it is a challenge that North Carolina must meet to ensure that our children are ready for college and entrance into the workforce. Reviewing and revising Common Core is a better way to accomplish this goal that discarding them and starting again all over again from scratch.

Matt Ellinwood is a Policy Analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education and Law Project.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/06/17/its-critical-to-find-common-ground-on-common-core/