How the Common Core Can Live On

In a clever, albeit depressing, piece education thought leader Dr. Stephen Fink of the Center for Education Leadership at the University of Washington penned an obituary for the Common Core. He rightly claims that the mainly political opposition to the implementation of what are perceived as federal education standards—even though Common Core was an initiative of the National Governors’ Association—began to doom the effort. This initial opposition then led to a broader attack from many quarters. He runs through the litany of complaints:

Pundits criticized that the standards had not been field-tested and declining test scores would particularly hurt the most disadvantaged students. Educators complained that they had to teach to new standards but for the most part didn’t get the time or training to do this right. Parents looked at their kids and saw more stress and lower scores. But above all, many people hated how incessant testing seemed to have driven out the joy of learning, teaching and raising a student.

In a clever, albeit depressing, piece education thought leader Dr. Stephen Fink of the Center for Education Leadership at the University of Washington penned an obituary for the Common Core. He rightly claims that the mainly political opposition to the implementation of what are perceived as federal education standards—even though Common Core was an initiative of the National Governors’ Association—began to doom the effort. This initial opposition then led to a broader attack from many quarters. 

In one sense it is hard to disagree with his premise. The Common Core as it currently exists in schools does not look like what its creators had imagined it to be. Too many states have rejected use of the Common Core and even more have given up implementation of its key assessments (either PARCC or Smarter Balance) for there to be anything close to a uniform set of learning standards across the country. And if there is no uniformity, there is no practical way of assuring that all young people in America will be held to the same expectations of what they should know and do before they graduate from high school.

Still, Fink’s obituary reminds me of that famous Mark Twain line, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” The Common Core in name may, indeed, be in decline, but its capacity to improve instruction and rigor are still very much alive.  In fact, Fink admits as much: “For roughly 40 million students, math and English standards designed to develop critical thinking had become a reality.” That is, whether or not Common Core exists in form, it is functionally in use, which means that “The challenge ahead is how to redesign professional learning so that teachers and leaders, at scale, have the necessary expertise to ensure that all students can meet higher academic standards.”

At NCTL, we deal with this challenge on a daily basis in our work with schools. We understand just how significant it is for teachers to shift their teaching from simply delivering content to enabling their students to access content on their own. We also know that for this shift in pedagogy to take root, teachers must work together to plan lessons, to review student work, to tailor instruction to individual student needs, to develop authentic assessments of student knowledge, and to hold each other accountable to high expectations. This lengthy agenda for teachers is why we work with them and school leaders to develop those practices that, first, dedicate sufficient time for teacher collaboration and planning and, second, leverage that time effectively.  Just to give one example of what we’re aiming for, take a look at this video from UP Academy in Boston as to what constitutes effective collaboration.

As Fink acknowledges, “At the end of the day, student learning cannot improve without developing teacher and leader practice.” So, let’s hope that the long-term impact of presenting a vision of what quality learning should look like (aka “Common Core learning standards”) is that we, as a nation, actually strive to get there by empowering teachers to make it happen.