An Interesting Common Core Exchange

Common Core and Curriculum Controversies

Something really struck me as strange during Fordham's panel discussion last week. At 54min 50sec in the video, there's a very basic, yet revealing, question posed by this young lady.

 Question: Garrett Fryer American Youth Policy Forum Was there ever a discussion, when you all were designing it, to implement it on a kindergarten level and letting it grow with the students as they aged on through each grade, as oppossed to implementing it with the entire school system nation wide? 

Answer: Jason Zimba This is something that states have each approached differently. Some states have done something more like that, some states have done something less like that. I seem to remember at one point I saw a MA plan where the grade level wasn’t the key parameter, but they had a Venn diagram, you know, what we do now the Common Core doesn’t do, what the Common Core does that we don’t, and then what sort of overlap, where we want to do it better. And they decided to take those three... in year one, we’re gonna focus on the overlap and do it better. In year two, we’ll drop things… and then in year three, we’ll add… I got the details of that wrong, but… my only point is that different states all approached it differently, and we may find out that some states were much wiser than others in this way. Singapore has a long standing, high functioning system in which they not only revise their syllabus ever so often, but they do it actually on the basis of how kids do, so think about that, a performance-based loop, a feedback loop. Which is something we are taking halting steps toward, but can only imagine. And so roughly every six years or so, they’ll put out tweaks to the thing. This year I noticed that they’ve rolled out a new thing in kindergarten. 

Lisa wonders... How in the world can one "image" OR take "halting steps toward" creating a "high functioning system" based on a "performance-based feedback loop" when we are STARTING with a top-down DESIGN by the name of Common Core?

full stop

Our school system has solved their efficiency problem by not only slowing gifted students but seemingly requiring them to stop all forward momentum. No acceleration and no 'enrichment' either. If you're done with an assignment alphabetize folders or tutor another student.

-Lisa


Same here. When full inclusion came six years ago, enrichment and in-class ability grouping were totally canceled in the elementary. Nothing above grade level can be offered. The old practice of going to a different class or grade to join an appropriate reading group was ended. If the student is done, s/he can read, draw, or navel gaze.

-lgm

My own district replaced the SRA math series with Math Trailblazers 6 years ago, eliminating achievement grouping as part of the package. Since Trailblazers moves more slowly than SRA, this meant that the advanced students were doubly decelerated. They lost their accelerated curriculum and they were now learning less in the regular curriculum than the non-accelerated kids had learned in the past.

Recently the superintendent told the school board that Trailblazers is built for and depends upon heterogeneous grouping; if you're going to have Trailblazers you can't have grouping and if you're going to have grouping you can't have Trailblazers.

So naturally she's committed to Trailblazers.