A parent recently approached me with a list of questions about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and how our schools are preparing for them. I was so pleased to have the conversation.
Why would this be so pleasing you wonder? As of Fall 2013, only 2/3 of adults in our country were aware of the CCSS and only 46% of parents with school-age children knew what these sweeping changes to our education system were all about.
The CCSS are a new set of reading and math standards that were adopted by 46 states. Michigan adopted them in June 2010 and since 2011 our district has been preparing for how these standards change teaching and learning.
DIFFERENT TEACHING
While the former state standards were very focused on “what” kids needed to learn, the CCSS emphasize “how” kids learn.
This change encourages teachers to look at instruction differently. Instead of literal questions from a text, we are now encouraging closer reading and teaching vocabulary using more informational texts than before. In math, the standards aren’t just focused on learning to memorize “doing math”, but “understanding” how math works. For example, I learned to memorize long division in elementary school (some of you probably did too), but our kids are learning how to do the same math mentally with multiple algorithms as they understand place value and decomposing numbers.
DIFFERENT TESTING
We did our last October MEAP test in 2013! With the CCSS, Michigan has joined a group called Smarter Balanced Assessments, which will begin testing on these standards next April/May 2015, pending final approval from state legislature. These tests are unlike any we’ve experienced, but are promising to measure kids’ learning better than filling in bubbles alone…they are dynamic and online.
DIFFERENT CHALLENGES
With change come new challenges and concerns. Some question the developmental appropriateness of these standards. Others fear the standards are a national curriculum. There are definitely concerns about the readiness of kids for the upcoming tests and the technological capacity of schools to have all kids test online.
You don’t have to google far to get both sides of a fierce debate, both personal and political, around the Common Core State Standards. On either side, Michigan has legislated that these standards are the next expectation and ruler to measure schools and our children.
For more information on the Common Core State Standards, here are some links:
http://www.corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know/
http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-28753_64839_64848—,00.html