Curriculum Counts: Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards

Presented by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for State and Local Leadership at the Manhattan Institute on February 28, 2013 in New York, New York, U.S.A.

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New York, NY (February 28, 2013) - A panel of educational leaders met at the Harvard Club today to discuss implementation of the Common Core in schools across the United States as part of Curriculum Counts: Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards. Sol Stern of City Journal introduced the group, which included Merryl Tisch, Tony Bennett, Linda Bevilacqua, and Kathleen Porter-Magee.

Beginning with Sol Stern, the discussion panel advocated for implementation of the Common Core; differences in members' opinions dealt with how the Common Core should be implemented, as well as creating accurate student assessments.  Guests heard a succinct history of the movement, from its conception under E.D. Hirsch, founder and chairperson of the Core Knowledge Foundation. At its most basic, the Common Core is a systemic shift from the Progressive educational theories that have shaped schooling in the United States since the first half of the twentieth century. For numerous reasons, the Common Core has been charged with everything from elitism to racism. Saving this debate for another day, the reality is that 45 states have signed onto the Common Core, many in response to President Barack Obama's Race to the Top initiative. Over the next several years, most American teachers, students, and parents will become familiar with the Common Core over the coming years.

Merryl Tisch, Chancellor to the New York State Board of Regents, described her journey to recognition of the Common Core as a necessary tool for improving New York's schools. She and her colleagues saw that 75% of NYCDE (New York City Department of Education) graduates studying in CUNY (City University of New York) colleges required remedial coursework; after six years in the CUNY system, less than 25% of NYCDE graduates had completed a college degree. Dr. Tisch recognized that these students were "not only not college-ready, but not career-ready." Dr. Tisch has participated in Engage New York, a website that provides free Common Core educational materials to educators. In the coming weeks, many students in New York will be tested along Common Core guidelines, which is causing a bit of panic locally. Dr. Tisch advises that the success rate on the Common Core test will reflect the college-ready numbers. Of course, with the Common Core so new, and existing college-ready students so few, this statement implies that the forthcoming Common Core test scores are expected to be quite poor.

Tony Bennett, Florida's Commissioner of Education, discussed the implementation of the Common Core from a state perspective. One of the biggest tasks ahead of the states is the public relations battle to illustrate to families that the Common Core is best for their children, state, and country. That is, implementation of the Common Core is not simply another standards adoption to which teachers can align their existing lesson plans. "Data-driven accountability will lead us to change," according to Dr. Bennett, and the Common Core correspond to ACT and SAT results. States must communicate the movement to the Common Core as a transformative initiative that will result in graduating seniors who are career- and college-ready.

Linda Bevilacqua of the Core Knowledge Foundation stresses the importance of implementation of the Common Core standards, rather than the standards themselves. She warns against six traps to proper implementation: (1) a myopic focus on aligning to the letter rather than to the spirit of the standards; (2) in an effort to include nonfiction texts, adding them haphazardly with no common theme; (3) a failure to understand vocabulary growth; (4) a failure to understand the importance of knowledge acquisition in the early grades; (5) ignorance of the role of listening and speaking skills in language development; and (6) a failure to recognize the need for curriculum-based testing to replace the current skills-based testing. Dr. Bevilacqua recommends assigning certain content area domains to each elementary grade so that teachers know what sort of content area vocabulary students are expected to know. For example, a state might tell teachers that fourth-graders are required to be proficient regarding, among other things, the U.S. Civil War. In anticipation of state testing, fourth-grade teachers would then include both fiction and nonfiction content-rich reading and writing during the school year. Instead of learning how to answer generic questions, students would learn the vocabulary and background knowledge necessary to comprehend readings on the subject, effectively write about it, etc. And of course, the hoped-for long-term result would be students who are effective communicators who also happen to possess a significant degree of knowledge on the U.S. Civil War.

Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute describes Common Core implementation as both a systemic reform movement and a classroom reform movement. She warns that classroom-level reform is much more difficult to achieve, and that pushing for too much change too quickly could have negative consequences. Also important, according to Ms. Porter-Magee, is recognizing what truly is aligned to the Common Core as opposed to what has merely been rubber-stamped; e.g., don't just listen to the guarantees of publishing companies. (Information on the Common Core Implementation Rubric Tool can be found here.) Additionally, it will be vital to get the Common Core assessments right.

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