Our Common Enemy: Common Core

For many of the past few years, I have been engaged in the social media world online.  Not only Facebook and MySpace, but also in communities like Reddit and Fark where people from many diverse backgrounds post and share information and opinions.  This culture of posting thoughts, beliefs and things which matter to us, as well as commenting on things others post has led to our culture removing many barriers to our more inner selves and thoughts.  Much of this on Facebook is very personal, whereas some other mediums provide the opportunity to post things more anonymously, from behind screen names and generally without repercussions. 

The result of all this sharing will make for some fascinating studies in the future, for it may lead to a more open and frank society, or it may lead to a further erosion of our civility as the more extreme parts of our culture continue to draw us all into choosing sides and alienating ourselves from those who believe differently than ourselves. 

But, of late, it seems as though there is one issue which tears down the traditional barriers between some of the various groups of friends I have online.  Whether they loathe the Obama years, or are they reside in the group who think Obama is essentially a god in the political world; nearly everyone I have seen post about Education and Common Core agrees: it is a terrifically awful path for education to take. 

Start talking Common Core and test scores and you are sure to get a virtual cacophony of commentary.  Nearly all of it decrying the direction our current trajectory is taking our country.  And rightfully so.

The current modern education system in America is an absolute disaster.  Despite having one child who survived it and is off to college, and another who is pushing through high school, I feel somewhat qualified to at least articulate an opinion formed through 24 school years to date. 

No Child Left Behind is a great slogan, as is the idea of a core set of educational foundations.  But what they have given us is a noose around the neck of the American school child and it is dragging our children, our teachers, and our future down. 

National standards were established to help balance previous racial and economic inequalities between states, counties and cities in their vastly varied quality of local educational systems.  It all sounded great and some intervention certainly was needed. 

But guess what?  Children learn differently.  Even children born to the same parents and living in the same house.  You cannot teach everyone the same way.  Some are bookworms.  Some loathe reading.  Some are visual learners, others are hands on.  You can't teach a child of a farmer in Montana the same way you teach a New York City Upper West Side kid.  You can work towards the same goals, but your way of teaching them will likely be different.  Educational systems must adapt to succeed.

Teachers need to have the freedom to find the best approach for their particular classroom.  Give them a set goal for where kids should be at the mid year point and end of the grade. 

The problem really sprang forth from a lack of accountability in the local school boards.  Too many voters had no clue about the various candidates for school boards, they voted name recognition and TV ads.  What did we get?  A lot of money-lined donors and career politicians who had likely never been in a classroom since the day they graduated. 

I have some vague ideas of how we can change things.  They may suck, they may be awesome  I just know where I would turn for trying to fix things and it isn't the federal government.  It's all local.

For starters, why not ask a couple of recently retired teachers, especially those who have been recognized by their peers, maybe a few current teachers, a few parent volunteers, and get them together to brainstorm for different suggestions on improving the system.  Not paid consultants.  Not university professors.  Have open forums where parents can offer feedback and engage in the brainstorming from time to time.  Don't ask some bureaucrat in DC or even the state capital to design your entire K-12 system. 

My own ideas have been things such as:

Go back to teaching hand writing in school.  I will NEVER forget the day when Sam's 3rd grade teacher (who we did NOT like much) told me in a conference she did not have time to teach handwriting, they had FCAT to prepare for...in mid-September).  Kids must be able to write legibly to ensure they can convey their ideas, to take good notes. 

Offer a basic life course in high school which is REQUIRED to graduate.  Teach everything from balancing checkbooks, how the stock market works, how investing for retirement works, how to write a resume, how to write a cover letter, job interview skills and practice, how insurance works and the different types, how to balance a budget, and maybe offer some kind of skills assessment test to help people get ideas for majors and careers.  That is just the start.  It could be a semester or a year depending on subject matter. 

Make the curriculum in grade schools more creative-friendly.  Allow for more art, music, and even creative writing and science.  Focus less on rote memorization and more on imagination, creativity, and a willingness to engage in the classroom.  For K through 2nd grade?  Assign reading with parents/siblings/grandparents/some adult for homework every night.  Every single night.  20 minutes.  Any book will do, vary them, but read together every night.  Try and help make parents accountable and engaged.

Quit doing silly "fairs" and competitions!  Yes, sometimes they can be interesting, but more often than not, they consume unholy amounts of time and resources for little gain.  Allow some students who WANT to go above and beyond the chance for some of these, but they should not be a huge part of a grade for an entire period.  I imagine most parents want their kids to learn about the periodic table, what the various bones are in the body, and how gravity works much more than how orange juice and coke can rust a nail over 4 weeks. Personally too, I loathe the competition aspect of them.  The real competition in education, at least through middle school is with yourself.  To improve, to grow, to learn.  We don't need a county history champ; we need a county FULL of history champs.

Heck, even standard tests for very basic skills are not evil and a complete waste of time and money.  But, maybe, just maybe those scores should not be shared with the entire world, and perhaps they should not be used to determine grade advancements, but rather to help evaluate how much students learned during the year?  Maybe you don't even give the students their scores, unless there is a problem at the midway point, and you just meet with the parents? 

Listen, I can't even really scratch the surface of ways to fix our education system in a blog.  I just felt like jotting my thoughts down tonight and posting.  I hope at least somewhere, a thought I wrote down might trigger an idea for someone, somewhere who might be able to build on it or use it as a starting point for their own better ideas to help fix things.  Maybe in enough people get to writing and thinking about it, some movement away from the Common Core path of destruction can be made.

The chart below helps also dispel the myth that money spent on education equals higher quality of education.  (See attachment from a huge study done and published by George Washington University).  These changes don't need to come with millions and millions of new dollars. 

Okay it's late.  In conclusion, I will say I have seen one very, very smart man talk about education over the years.  Go google Ken Robinson Ted Talks and watch those.  Read his book.  It isn't an all-in-one solution to all our woes, but he offers some great ideas.  

facethefacts.org