While the Common Core standards specifically map out how to improve teaching and instruction in the classroom, it remains fuzzy on dealing with racial inequities in education and providing academic support for students, say critics.
Oak Park school districts 200 and 97 are fully integrating Common Core into their classrooms this school year, along with more than 40 other states. But some states, like Indiana and Alabama, have either scaled back or pulled out of Common Core completely.
D200 and D97 have embraced Common Core, but the educational model has some potential “dangerous trends,” warns John Duffy, a 17-year Oak Park resident and retired educator.
Duffy taught at Proviso East and Hinsdale Central high schools for more than 20 years before retiring in 2006. He continues to volunteer in education, including serving on OPRF’s strategic plan steering committee and task force. Literacy education is a particular interest to Duffy, a father of six children.
Racial inequity in the classroom is another passion, he said, having worked on the issue since 1972, he said.
Duffy said there’s a lot of promise with Common Core but also trepidation deeply embedded in it. Its emphasis on having all kids reading critically, for instance, is good, he said.
Common Core standards focus on math and English language arts. But it says very little, if anything, about addressing structural inequities in education, according to Duffy.
“This will be the third generation that’s dealing with race and education in Oak Park. It’s an ongoing challenge and we’re still trying to get it right, with new parents and children entering the school system. Achievement gaps are based on class and race and you can’t address that if you’re not addressing it as a school and a community,” Duffy said.
Having more social and emotional supports for students, as well as academic, helps in addressing not only the gap but students’ overall development, Duffy insists. Common Core, however, comes up short in that area, he said.
“The social and emotional development in so critical in education, because if you don’t address and really embrace that, how can you expect a child to be fully engaged in their own education?” Duffy said, adding that Common Core fails to address social and emotional development.
“Common Core has a chance to look in the high school to see how these curricula and standards prepare kids for the real world. But the social and emotional supports have to be in place; they have to be there,” Duffy said. “But if the school doesn’t cultivate that and take it on, it won’t work. But it can’t just be the school alone; the community has to be involved. That’s the other critical piece to all this. If the community isn’t engaged, Common Core will not have a chance.”
Academic support is also needed, which Common Core says little about, Duffy added. OPRF needs to look at what support it has in place and what’s been the downside, he said.
But Common Core, he noted, is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It may work well for some states and not so well for others. The hope is that it allows for some flexibility and creativity in school districts, Duffy noted.
Duffy advocates for “student-centered classrooms,” with more choice and ways to share knowledge among students. Teachers, he stressed, aren’t pushed aside or relegated to bystander status in such classrooms.
“Knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge just can’t come from the teacher — that old ‘The Sage on the Stage’ mindset. It’s not saying that teachers aren’t important — they are. But it’s about learning how to teach differently. There has to be a balance between teaching and stimulation students. And you stimulate them by making classrooms more Democratic, creating more opportunities for students to share knowledge.”
‘Rigor’ vs. ‘vigor’
Common Core also emphasizes teaching students to be critical thinkers “based on rigorous content and the application of knowledge,” according to its website, www.corestandards.org.
But this idea of more “rigor” might be alarming to many parents and students, noted Isabel Nuñez, an associate professor at Concordia University.
She also thinks Common Core has some potential, especially in allowing more depth and focus in a variety of content areas. But when she hears “rigor,” Nuñez said she thinks of rigidity, unchanging and moribund. That might not be what Common Core intends, but that might be the message that’s getting to families, according to Nuñez.
“Parents, teachers and students are nervous and perhaps this push around rigor has caused some fear and anxiety, and also contributes to the sale of materials [from education companies] if parents want their kids to do well on the exams.”
Common Core’s computerized assessment exam, PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), will be given to students in grades 3-11 each spring.
Nuñez and Duffy both have concerns about PARCC. Duffy thinks the test could actually widen the achievement gap, putting undue stress on students. Nuñez, who teaches in Concordia’s Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice, doesn’t think asking students multiple-choice questions is the best way to assess what they’ve learned.
A better way to do that would be, for instance, having them do a task or project that’s tracked throughout the school year. This “portfolio assessment” is more performance-based than the old “pick one” multiple choice exams, Nuñez said.
“[Multiple choice] is very cost-efficient, and it is the most efficient way to test large numbers of students. There’s no other way to test so many in such a short amount of time,” she said, adding that it also provides profits to companies that specialize in selling testing materials, firms like Texas-based Pierson Publishing and Riverside Publishing in Rolling Meadows.
Nuñez added that Common Core doesn’t place a great enough focus on students’ personal engagement with the content.
“That’s very concerning to me,” she said. “Education is not just about preparing them for workforce participation. It’s about engaging with who they are and how this impacts them personally.”
Duffy thinks the emphasis and focus should not be about more rigor but more “vigor,” more excitement and imagination in learning for kids.
“When so-called rigor is driving curriculum, that can be dangerous,” he said. “Kids need to be challenged but not so overstressed where they lose motivation.” Â