Myths of the Common Core

In the last few weeks, I’ve published three blog posts dispelling some of the myths surrounding the Common Core Standards and their implementation around our country.

My first thought this morning was to share them individually over Twitter and Facebook but I thought multiple tweets and status updates would overly saturate the stream. I decided it would be a better idea to collect the blog posts here in one container post. What follows are just the tip of the iceberg of conversations we should be having about the Race To The Top implementation for the sake of doing what is best for children as well as preparing them to be successful in life.

The first post, entitled The Problem is Not The Standards, details the minutiae around the standards that many folks are concerned with, though the standards themselves are almost always NOT the target of the conversation.

The second post, entitled An Alternate Take on the Close Reading Standard, discusses the emphasis on Close Reading in the standards rather than opportunities for metacognition and students providing evidence for thinking what they are thinking.

The third and most recent post, The 70 / 30 Delusion, explores the oft-overlooked page 5 of the ELA Common Core Standards dealing with the balance between literary and informational text.

I write often about the Common Core standards and I hope that readers understand that I am writing from an authentic place that matters to many teachers’ professional practice. I see a lot of different versions of the way that Common Core standards are implemented nationwide and I think that teachers are to be valued for adding their professional experiences and expertise to that implementation. What we’ve all learned about instruction and children should not be displaced by what vendors say is important. All of these new resources add to the menu of instructional options but shouldn’t become a verbatim checklist of what we must “cover.”

Stay tuned, more to come on this topic! I hope to see many of you reading this at the ASCD Conference in L.A. in March!

Follow Mike on Twitter: @fisher1000