THE
CORE
Core from becoming yet another
laundry list unfocused and impractical learning standards.
Some of the standards’ writers
recall pushing back on certain
details, pointing to what they
saw as the strongest research and
evidence on what knowledge and
skills students need to succeed.
In March 2010, the standards
writing group released a draft to
the public. They didn’t know what
to expect. “Nobody thought it
would be the sort of national news
that it is now,” Minnich recalled.
They analyzed 10,000 public comments pulled from a website they
had set up and revised the standards yet again with that feedback
in mind. More than half of the
comments came from educators,
but only 20 percent came from
parents. In June of that year, CCSSO and NGA released the final
Common Core State Standards at
an event in Suwanee, Ga.
In the end, they accomplished
exactly what they had set out to
achieve: Through good luck, good
timing, the support of the federal
government and a long-held desire
among governors to get it done,
they had created the country’s
first set of shared ideas for what
students need to know and when.
HUFFINGTON
02.02.14
Some states were enthusiastic about the Core’s potential —
proud of a process they had engaged in for years. Others went
along to comply with their Race
to the Top promises. One by one,
45 states signed onto the finished
Common Core, with Minnesota
just adopting the reading portion.
Some of the biggest fights they had centered
on the question of whether kids really needed
to learn how to divide with remainders, or
memorize multiplication tables. (In the end,
the Core says they must know both.)
The last of these states to sign on
did so by the middle of 2011.
It had all happened fast. Maybe,
in hindsight, a little too fast. “Part
of me wishes it had taken a little
bit longer so ... everyone could have
had a deeper understanding of what
this was,” the NGA’s Linn said.
CORE IN TROUBLE
Several states have rolled out the
new standards — often quietly
— and teachers across the country are already teaching to them.
Jennifer Wilson, a math teacher
in Mississippi, said she loves the
flexibility the Core gives her, and
added that her classes are more