Category Archives: Common Core State Standards

Do You Know About ShareMyLesson.com?

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If You Happen To Know Any Teachers, Here’s Something That Will Make Their Day

The last few years have been tough on schools. With deep budget cuts, many have had to scramble to teach the same number of kids (and sometimes more!) with less. Here’s one truly amazing idea that aims to equalize the playing field and give all students the kind of engaging classroom time they deserve.

It’s called “ShareMyLesson.com” and it’s free!

Free back-to-school teaching resources
The fastest-growing network of teachers in the U.S.

Sounds pretty cool!

A Brief Overview of New Mexico Common Core State Standards (NMCCSS)

Recent articles have called Common Core (CC) into question for a variety of reasons. Many of them seem either politically motivated, nonsense posturing, or both.

A few states have tested under CC and found test scores went down from No Child Left Behind NCLB – testing standards under NCLB were gutted a few years ago by allowing states to ‘set their own’ standards if NCLB seemed embarrassingly tough.
‘CC test scores going down’ is the problem and reveals the ‘experimental’ therefore untrustworthy nature of CC – so, kids performing below grade level, dropping out, and requiring much remediation for higher education are not, and have not been, the problem since even before NCLB passed in 2002?
Local standards varied greatly and didn’t seem to be getting the job done anyway – one recent editorial by a U.S. Representative stated a) ‘all these new programs’ were confusing and wasteful, b) government imposed standards was a bad idea, and what was needed were c) ‘voluntary’ standards … really? Voluntary standards? One wonders if the person owned or used a dictionary, besides, NCLB becoming a ‘voluntary standard’ caused big problems.

Anyway, clicking on the image below will take you to a 16-slide Prezi presentation. You can change slides by clicking the right-left arrows at the page bottom; after the first click you can change slides by pressing the left-right keyboard arrows.

Common Core State Standards kerfuffle?

In the last few weeks and days, I’ve come across a number of articles expressing pro’s and con’s about Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with critics mounting a flurry of attacks and proponents working hard to shore up support. One pretty good overview article is Common Core Under Fire: How Strong Is Support for New State Standards? You can get as many details as you want by clicking on various links.

My Prezi presentation on New Mexico’s use of CCSS gives a pretty good overview of what they are, what their intent is, and how they are planned to be used in New Mexico.

The Common Core evolved from a 2009-2010 drive by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to delineate world-class skills students should possess. The standards, created with funding from, among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, set detailed goals, such as first graders should understand place values in math and eighth graders should know the Pythagorean Theorem.

“We brought the best minds in the country together to create international benchmarks that, once mastered, would make our students more competitive, globally,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. He said his group has no plans to create national science standards.

Here is a brief summary of some of the pro and con positions:

Pro

A Kentucky fifth grade teacher said, “These standards take students much deeper into the subjects and force them to do more critical thinking,”
No Child Left Behind allowed states to create their own unique standards; which could give them the appearance of higher “scores”
A 2010 Fordham Institute study found CCSS Common Core to be “a great improvement with regard to rigor and cohesiveness”
CCSS do not dictate curriculum (e.g., textbooks and reading lists) or prescribe methods of instruction
Education technology providers have already been designing products based on CCSS

Con

This is a federal intrusion into states rights via Race-To-The-Top via financial incentive
5 states worry CCSS establishes a de facto “national curriculum” (Utah, South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Alabama)
Implementation may require more time than planned or allowed
Republican National Committee decided at their March 2013 approved a resolution condemning CCSS
Can standards-based education also be individualized?
Seeing children as education industry profit centers may be problematic

So, what do YOU say?