How poor districts will fare with CCSS

Prior to the Common Core, states set their own standards and chose their own tests to measure student progress, writes Marc Tucker in Education Week. States that required a test for graduation used exams that could be passed by students with a 9th grade level of English literacy and a deeply flawed understanding of middle school math. We currently recruit teachers from the lower ranks of those high school graduates, Tucker notes, and our expectations for their command of subjects they eventually teach is modest, especially for elementary school. The Common Core requires students not simply to execute mathematics algorithms accurately, but understand why those algorithms work. It requires students to marshal knowledge from different arenas to make carefully reasoned and persuasive arguments in good English. Tucker finds no reason to believe our teachers are better writers than the average college student, a lower standard than drafters of the Common Core had in mind. Only wealthy districts are likely to fulfill the promise of the Common Core unless something is done to radically improve the capacity of less-favored districts to employ teachers with the education and training to function at high levels. The Common Core is far more likely to be declared a failure by the public because states failed to implement it well than fall victim to attacks from the right or left.More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.