Standards or Strategies?

Over the past few months I’ve been hearing more and more references in professional circles about “teaching the Common Core way.” This has been perplexing to me, as we’ve been told by the powers that be that "the Common Core is a set of STANDARDS not curriculum." Standards are actually very EASY to work with. Once a teacher knows and understands what each standard

represents, we absorb and incorporate them right into our curriculum. But when Commissioner King talks about walking into classrooms and “seeing” teachers and children working with the Common Core, educators are irritated, and rightfully so. This is because King is actually talking about seeing the “protocols” from the EngageNY scripted modules being used.

So, what are “protocols”?

Well, according to Webster:

a) a system of rules that explain the correct conduct and procedures to be followed in formal situations 

b) a plan for a scientific experiment or for medical treatment 

These definitions are actually very telling. If the “Common Core Way” is to follow “protocols” as defined by Webster (definition a or b apply equally), then the incorporation of Common Core is not about simply adhering to a set of standards, rather, it is the expectation that all teachers will be using the same teaching methods or strategies in order to deliver the prescribed content. If that is the case, we have a very real and legitimate issue regarding the implementation of the Common Core.

          I came to this realization during a recent “Module Training” seminar, but THIS article written by Lynne Munson, one of the NON-EDUCATOR architects of the Common Core Math curriculum, solidified the concept for me. Munson’s article fawns over these “new” protocols in the “math curriculum for New York students and teachers that routinely requires students to "turn and talk" and explain the math they learned to their peers.”  What Munson fails to realize, however, is that methods such as these are not new! These are strategies that actual TEACHERS have been trained to use throughout their professional education and certification processes, Master’s degree programs, post-graduate work and through professional development over the course of their careers. The patronizing condescension dripping from Munson’s article is actually insulting and infuriating to real teachers because, unlike Munson, we actually know when to use such methods and which students would benefit the most from each one. We also know what children at certain ages are capable of because we've studied it. Munson has no idea who Piaget is, and does not understand why simply pushing material from upper grades down to lower grades in order to raise expectations of what children of a certain grade should be able to do is developmentally inappropriate and physiologically impossible. Granted, not every teacher knows every strategy, and we welcome true professional development that presents new, researched-based methods and allows us to learn them and incorporate them in our own lessons in ways that work for us. But, the only folks who need to be told which methods and strategies to use are the "highly qualified" (snort) Teach For America scabs who are using the backs of schoolchildren to build their corporate career ladders.

So, What's the Big Deal?

      The problem lies with such strategies being inextricably tied to the term “Common Core” – no wonder folks are so confused! Standards and Strategies are (and should be) mutually exclusive terms. This is also why the standardized tests “based on Common Core” are troublesome. If, in fact, these methods and strategies are the true crux of the Common Core, then the Standardized tests are not actually testing whether students have met the standards, they are testing whether teachers have familiarized students with aspects of specific learning strategies. The test becomes not a measure of whether a student has learned to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, but whether the teacher has used the new buzzwords such as such as "tape diagram" and "number bond". It is essentially a vocabulary test to measure how much teachers have indoctrinated students with jargon developed by 60 uninitiated hacks who decided to play in someone else’s sandbox.

 Buzzword: :  an important-sounding usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen