(Excerpts from a recent report issued by EdSource – www.edsource.org)
What is the Common Core? How does this affect California?
The Common Core Standards Initiative is the latest effort to create rigorous, common academic standards among states. Federal policymakers and business leaders across the country are calling for states to adopt a common, rigorous body of college- and career-ready skills and knowledge in English and mathematics that all K–12 students will be expected to master by the time they graduate. The Initiative has garnered the participation of 48 states since its official creation in April 2009.
Currently, there is a wide variation among states in their standards and expectations for what students should be learning. Some refer to this as a “crazy patchwork” of expectations and often not sufficient to produce high school graduates with strong skills and knowledge, especially in English language arts and math. This is jeopardizing America’s ability to succeed in the global marketplace.
The standards, claim critics, both among and within states -- including California -- suffer from lack of rigor, clarity and focus. Some refer to the latter as being “a mile wide and an inch deep.” These critics are concerned that when states require too many standards, teachers can cover them only superficially, lessening students’ mastery of key skills. Fordham’s review of state standards found this to be a common problem: “Kitchen-sinkism is alive and well, as states refuse to make choices and instead develop encyclopedic standards that no teacher could possibly cover in the course of a year.”
According to Common Core supporters, several states would end up with more rigorous standards as a result of adopting the Common Core. And if states put in place all of the components of standards-based reform, they would be able to prepare more students to take on complex, high-paying jobs. The initiative’s website puts it this way: “This work presents a significant and historic opportunity for states to accelerate and drive education reform toward the ultimate goal of children—from states across the country—graduating from high school ready for college, work, and success in the global economy.” Implicit in this line of thought is that America’s economic competitiveness would increase as well.
In its effort to compete for an RTT grant (see below), California enacted a law in January 2010 that requires the State Board of Education to consider adopting the Common Core as the centerpiece of the state’s K–12 academic content standards. The board will need to consider several questions: Are the Common Core standards better than California’s existing, highly rated standards, and based on what evidence? Should the state endorse one set of expectations for all high school graduates? Can California afford to implement the standards and how would it do so? Can it afford not to if the vast majority of other states implement them?
Finally, global economic forces might compel California to reconsider the varying expectations that it has for its high school graduates. The high school graduation requirements in this state may be too low, effectively giving students a mistaken impression of what constitutes adequate preparation for adult success. (See chart comparing requirements for high school diploma versus eligibility for public college on following page). These are issues that California might face regardless of the State Board of Education’s decision on the Common Core, but they are pertinent to that decision as well.
The board will need to make informed judgments as to whether the Common Core will give students more of what they need to know for the future than the state’s current standards, and what the implications might be for the state’s minimum requirements for all high school graduates. In addition, if the Common Core is substantially different from the state’s current standards, the board will need to decide whether adopting it will be worth the disruption to state assessment and accountability systems and to district and school curricula. If the proposed standards diverge substantially from California’s current standards, this will create a need for new frameworks and instructional materials and at least one-time training sessions for existing teachers and principals. The cost to the state in that case could be substantial.
In this fiscal climate, California has not budgeted for the cost of implementing new standards. Even if California could share the cost of some of those activities with other states that had adopted the Common Core, there would still be costs to California in the next few years, a hard thing to contemplate at a time of severe reductions.
