We can either see this as an opportunity to innovate and improve learning…or we can just go on with business as usual.

I recently gave a short talk about this at SXSWedu. Here it is. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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Among the main points of this presentation were:

• The Common Core standards offer a unique opportunity for schools to examine the interconnected realms of standards, curriculum, assessment, and professional development, and hopefully, to improve learning.
• Common Core represents a significant change. If you think you have implemented Common Core and your classrooms don’t look substantially different than they did before, you haven’t really implemented Common Core. (Related points: Cross-walk documents and superficial alignments are not the best tools to realize the benefits of this change.)
• New assessments are coming in 2014. They too will be very different. We need to explore how students are being prepared for these assessments and, of course, for the real world.

I feel a certain amount of sadness that most educators seem to view Common Core as yet another worthless series of hoops they are being asked to jump through, rather than as an opportunity to do the kind of deeper learning that many of us feel is missing from classrooms.

One of my concerns about Common Core is that many districts seem to be implementing the new standards very quickly, possibly without considering all the opportunities and ramifications. New instructional materials are being purchased hastily. Professional development and planning is inadequate.

In the audience of school board members I spoke with, approximately two-thirds said that they have already implemented or are well into implementing these new standards. Many are doing this without being aware of the forthcoming new assessments and without thorough thought about related curriculum and instructional materials issues.

For example, at a time in which many districts are making large curriculum purchases, might it be a good time to think about digital content? New ways to involve teachers? Etc.

As we discussed these issues, there was a fair amount of discontent in the audience about the current state of assessment. Teachers are not afforded the professionalism to do what they know is best for students. Charter schools are often lauded without being held to the same standards. Deeper learning is not happening in many classrooms. Many new mandates are unfunded. There was plenty of unhappiness and blame to go around.

But perhaps it is time to put aside the blame and start doing some things that we all believe are best for our students.

This point in time might be the best opportunity in decades to look deeply at standards, curriculum, assessment, and the professional role of our teachers — it is simply too important to rush through or not do to the best of our abilities.

The post Common Core: The good, the bad, and the ugly appeared first on K12 Handhelds.

Yet, as I’ve seen the beginning of Common Core implementations, they don’t seem to be living up to that potential. And the outcry from teachers about the problems with Common Core have surprised me. They largely seem to view it as the millionth change imposed on them by the powers that be. “This too shall pass” is what I’m hearing. This passive resistance has surprised me because I saw Common Core as a part of the solution to the curriculum and assessment problems that everyone sees.

I talked to someone from an organization involved in Common Core who said “If a school is implementing Common Core, and it doesn’t look radically different from how it looked before, they aren’t really implementing the Common Core.” Again, what I see so far isn’t radically different curriculum or classroom practice.

So why the disconnect?

I think the answer lies in part in how schools are implementing the standards, which looks something like this:

• Look at a cross-walk of old standards to new standards.
• Identify major changes between grade levels and any additions.
• Layer that onto the old and proceed.

I think that process misses the spirit of the Common Core.

In business, we do something called zero-based budgeting. The idea is that instead taking last year’s plan and adding a bunch of incremental stuff to it, you start from zero. This forces a hard look at every decision and its relation to the overall mission.

What if a curriculum were designed from scratch using Common Core? I venture to say it would look quite a bit different than one taken from previous years with cross-walk items added. Probably a lot more like what those of us who were hopeful about Common Core were thinking. And what a wonderful opportunity for some collaborative professional exploration around standards unpacking and curriculum mapping.

Anyone doing this?

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States are cross-walking their current standards to the Common Core and adding their 15%. Districts are frantically trying to figure out how they’ll implement the new standards. Pundits are either hailing the new standards or criticizing them.

I’m not entirely convinced that these new standards are better than many states’ standards, but I think there potentially are benefits to be gained from having a more nationally consistent approach to standards and assessment. More importantly, I think the intent behind the Common Core — namely to reflect deeper learning and more emphasis on real-world skills (and presumably less emphasis on teaching to ridiculous bubble tests) — is good.

Of course, the real test (no pun intended) will come when the new assessments come out in a couple years. If these assessments meet their goal of assessing deeper, more meaningful, real-world skills, then they, along with the Common Core, will be a strong impetus toward meaningful change in education. Students will simply have to learn in different ways to meet the challenge.

In the meantime, most groups are addressing the Common Core, not by looking at their intent and implementing meaningful reform, but by cross-walking their standards and moving existing instruction units from grade x to grade y to fill the holes.

Surely, this is not what the advocates of the Common Core had in mind. Equally certainly, it is not what our students (or teachers) deserve.

The Common Core was not a plan to do the same thing in a different sequence. It is a call to look at learning in a different ways. It demands new methods, new materials, new ways of thinking about learning.

And if the new assessments shape up as planned, and we haven’t taken the opportunity to embrace some new approaches, we’ll be in for even more vitriolic accountability discussions.

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