Many people have legitimate beefs with the system, but simply are using the wrong terminology. Some are attacking the wrong department or the wrong initiative. You have the right to your opinion. Just know what you're talking about so we can help you. My job is to teach you. It's your job to use what you learn.
I was recently involved in a "discussion", if you want to call it that, about the general crappiness and dangers of public school education in Alabama. The big danger: Common Core. I won't get into the name calling, slandering what teachers know about education, accusations of vats of Obama flavored Kool-aid, or state mind control brought up. What I realized in all of it is that a lot of people are mad and don't know why. A lot of people have no idea who to address for their concerns or even what to address as a concern. If you ever want to know something... ask a teacher!
So what is "Common Core"? Remember when Bush did his whole "No Child Left Behind" thing? CC is the people's answer to having government forced upon them. NCLB was horribly designed with unrealistic expectations, but it succeeded in forcing states to up their game, reconsider who needs to be in classrooms and who doesn't, and forced states like Alabama to intervene in really awful schools. As with any reform, there was massive push-back from the people who generally needed the reform the most. Many are not aware that NCLB is still in full force. And to get rid of our current state standards would force us back into No Child Left Behind.
A lot of good teachers lost their jobs under NCLB. I personally knew people who had been teaching the same class for over a decade who were suddenly labeled "not highly qualified" while some 23 year old with no experience was suddenly considered superior. Politicians tampering with the system ruined a lot of lives. Ok, off my soap box.
(Here's a good overview from a highly respected conservative site, since everyone I've ever argued with about Common Core seems to be Tea Party conservatives. Excuse me. They are "independents" who simply read Tea Party sites and repost everything Tea Party on Facebook.)
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/student-success-act-reforming-no-child-left-behind
Common Core was created by the National Governors Association because - get this - the Federal government is forbidden by law to create a national curriculum. That's right, the feds are forbidden by federal law to do what Scott Beeson and the others are claiming is happening. It was created with the sole intention of removing government pressure from the states. Unfortunately, it was written by politicians and their supporters with very little input from educators. Again, great idea, but no one asked the experts.
Check out this article about CC creation by a national spokesperson who does not like the way they were created. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/
So what IS Common Core Curriculum Standards? For us in Alabama, it's simply learning objectives. Standards. They say such crazy liberal things as "students will be able to identify fact from opinion in a reading selection."
"But what about teaching my kids about accepting queers and sex and abandoning the classics and quoting the Koran? Where is all that?" (You'll find such claims here, where a church led rally with speakers from christian institutions and key note speaker Scott Beeson will issue a call to all Christians to oppose blindly any government initiative. True story. http://www.auee.org/) If you look at the sources of all your scare tactic articles you'll find "a teacher in Texas did..." or "Someone in New York said..."
Why is there no big huge controversial story out of Alabama about crazy godless lessons?
Truth is, there is no curriculum attached to Common Core. Especially not in Alabama. See, standards are the goals of the lesson. I have to cite my standards on every lesson plan every day. Teachers have to justify what they are teaching and how it applies. We must align our lessons with the county course of study (which gives us specific, bullet pointed topics to cover) and state course of study objectives. We have to keep the pace set by the county pacing guide. All of this must incorporate in some form the state's adaptation of Common Core standards. By law, each Local Education Agency (LEA) can determine what it teaches and can add to any state standard.
When I make a lesson plan, my template looks like this. I then must choose a reading and writing standard which I will cover in that lesson.
Here is a direct quote from the act signed by Bob Riley and his Republican counterparts to enact CC standards in Alabama.
"Whereas
the Alabama State Board of Education will continue to be the sole and
exclusive entity vested with the authority, without restriction, to
adopt and revoke all academic standards in all subjects in the public
schools in the state of Alabama, including Common Core Standards,
without direct or indirect pressure or coercion by the United States
government or any of it's subdivisions... Local Education
Agencies may add additional content standards as determined and
approved by their local boards of education without restriction... Shall
not apply to assessments of Alabama students unless approved by a vote
of the Alabama State Board of Education... Now, therefore be it
resolved, that the Alabama State Board of Education does hereby adopt
the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and
Mathematics."
"Yes, but don't we HAVE to adopt the standards to get federal money?" If you mean Race To The Top funds that Obama created? Yes. This may shock you, but the Obama administration has found a way around the law. In return Alabama has dropped out. We also dropped out of the testing portions of the whole national movement and created our own. We dropped the vast majority of everything and created our own.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/02/alabama_withdraws_from_both_te.html
Alabama's standards are called College and Career Readiness Standards. Please read what your child is actually expected to learn.
http://web.alsde.edu/home/general/alccs.aspx
Like it or not, all of your major college entrance tests are aligning with CC standards. If we don't keep up with an equivalent standard, our students will fall farther behind on a national scale. But then again, preparing students for college is called "high school". It's the only way to keep up.
"CC is making our kids stoopid. Yeh, huh! I reeded it on Facebook!" Following a link from a vehemently opposed website, you'll find this document below the call for all Christians to fight Common Core. It's the actual minutes of the meeting where we decided to adopt CC standards. Scroll down. Read closely. No federal involvement. Higher standards. Lower costs. Alabama, 100% on it's own, decided that CC was better than what we had before... http://www.auee.org/history-of-common-core-in-alabama.html
"Racism. This is all about race." No, PLAN 2020 is all about race. To get out of NCLB, we had to create a plan to show constant improvement and how we plan to deal with achievement gaps.
In Alabama, we chose to embrace our gaps. Under the new plan created by the state of Alabama, we no longer have to strive for 100% mastery.
Some groups don't even have to hit 80%.
Here's the new plan:
Each racial and demographic subgroup - white, black, hispanic, special needs, free lunch, etc. - takes a test. (We chose a series of tests put out by the ACT). Each subgroup gets rated. Now we take the percentage of students rated as sufficient and subtract from 100%. By 2020, we must close that achievement gap for that subgroup by 50%.
Ex: Let's say white kids at X High School score 80% mastery. By 2020 that school needs to have white kids at 90% mastery. They have 6 years left to reach this. Each year that school must improve by 1.67% to stay be passing school.
Let's say blacks score 70% mastery. They need to improve only to 85% by 2020 to be successful.
All feeling aside, this is a really accurate example for many schools.
I know first hand of several schools in my system dealing with this. Does this irk you that we have different standards for different races? This is what happens when states with a long history of discrimination are left to their own devices.
"Somewhere in all this is testing." Yep, there are some tests. When I was a kid in the 80's, we tested. When I graduated in '91, we tested. What are these tests we're taking in Alabama? For the high school I work at, they are ACT prep tests. They are practice tests. We use the test results to predict where we need to focus on your kids more and where we've let your kid slide.
In Jefferson County, we implemented benchmark tests this year created by Jefferson County. Every 9 weeks, we give every student in the system the same test (by grade level and subject) to keep teachers on the same page and pace. These tests are written by teachers and count only as a normal test grade. Teacher performance can now be compared county-wide to find the weak links. Isn't that what everyone has been calling for: teacher accountability and finding the weak links?
As for curriculum, every teacher has an autonomous classroom in Alabama. The state and LEA give us a bullet pointed list of things to cover. How we cover that is up to us. If "a teacher promoted Islam" as we see in headlines, then that teacher is guilty and none other. (Islam is taught in the 8th grade as part of Ancient World History and as part of an over-view of the 4 major world religions.)
"But I know I read that the textbooks are 'common core aligned'. What does that mean?"
I am on a committee that is currently selecting the textbooks for ALL social studies classes in Jefferson County for the next decade. When Common Core based standards passed, we did not purchase new books to match it. And we won't now either. Because all CC is... a bullet-pointed set of learning standards.
To help those lazy teachers write their 180 lessons per year per subject, textbook writers try to do as much of the research as possible for the teachers. Teacher edition books have notes all in the margins to tell you when you covered a state course of study item or skill. CC reading and writing objectives are also pointed out. Check out the pics below of a book I'm currently reviewing.
No idea why blogger.com insists on inverting the pics, but we roll with it.
See the notes in the margins? That is your Common Core alignment. That's it. The rest was chosen by the State of Alabama Course of Study. Now I can click off the drop box on my lesson plans and move on to actually teaching.
So...
If you have an issue with the presentation of material your child is being exposed to in their classroom, your issue is with your teacher/counselor/school.
If you have an issue with your textbooks and their content, you have a local school system issue. Your system chose it.
If you have an issue with standardized testing, a) it's going to be a long life for you unless you want your kid to avoid college, military, and/or graduation, and b) your issue is with the local school system for 9 weeks testing and the state with any ACT related testing.
If you have an issue with curriculum chosen, your issue is with Alabama College and Career Readiness Standards. (see above for testing those standards.)
If your problem is with race factors and school grading, your issue is with PLAN 2020.
If you have a problem with anything promoted by the government, then your issue is a home school v. public school issue.
If you have a states rights issue, then you support Common Core and its 100% state autonomy, because the alternatives is to return to No Child Left Behind.
So if you've answered 'NO' to all of the above situations, have read CC standards, and just don't want your child to read or write on the same level as his/her competitors across the nation, then yes, Common Core is your issue. Attack it for all you're worth. At least now you will survive a real debate without resorting to name calling, disruptions, accusing others of promoting gay sex and communism, or crying racism to drown out your opponent.
If you want to be heard by educators, you have to come across as learned. (For the record, most of us are not fans of how it was implemented, but kind-of like the actual standards themselves. And ANYTHING beats what we had before this!) But if all you want to do is fight Obama and the gay commies we hear so much about, then you'd be better served in a different fight and leaving education to those who do not discriminate (see my opening remarks).
