Decoding the Common Core: A Teacher's Perspective

—Jared Boggess for Education Week

• Ed Week

From my perspective as an experienced English teacher in New York City, the Common Core State Standards represent neither the problem nor the solution. They have brought both positive and negative elements to my classroom and my profession. I've generally stayed quiet in the debates around the common standards, but now that I've spent several years with them, it occurs to me that it's an apt time to reflect on their impact overall.

When I first read through the English/language arts standards for secondary grades, I wasn't expecting to have much of a reaction: a new list to sift through, a new language to learn. State standards had never been a primary influence for me in my big-picture vision for education or my day-to-day teaching; my relationship with them has been one mainly of coexistence. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to find that the common-core standards appeared to be much more closely aligned to my teaching than my state's previous standards. I also found their presentation to be more organized and even quite elegant.

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