Adoption of Common Core Standards Would Be a Statement for K-12 Cohesion--- But Central School District Activism Remains Key to the Overhaul of Public Education

Adoption of Common Core Standards would constitute a statement for cohesion in K-12 education in Minnesota.


In this respect, instituting these logically sequenced skill and knowledge sets for grade by grade introduction throughout the K-12 years would be a favorable move by education decision-makers in the state. We must always be aware, though, that the education establishment--- and both Democratic and Republican partisans--- always sweep in to undermine any positive efforts to overhaul K-12 education. Thus the key locus for activists truly desiring to make the needed change in the way we educate our young people will be the central school district level, such as that represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools.


In an ideal world, we would adopt and forcefully move to implement the Common Core Standards. In the very real world in which these standards were devised, the results of a diverse and bipartisan committee of educators carefully crafted the Common Core Standards that present an academic program of great integrity and continuity for implementation throughout the K-12 years.


A detailed examination of the Common Core website demonstrates just how wrong and ill-informed was Minnesota House member Jim Abeler in asserting that the standards would be a move toward academic mediocrity in Minnesota.  In fact, the standards are academically rigorous, offering both a route to a greater knowledge base for our students, from which Common Core also challenges students to reason and analyze based on the knowledge that they accumulate as they move from grade to grade.


In math, the Common Core sequence at the K-2 level would find students progressing sequentially through ascending levels of additive and subtractive operations, knowledge of place value, and increasing mastery of geometric shapes in two and three dimensions. By Grade 3, students move on to mastery of basic fractions and an array of multiplicative and divisional tasks. By Grade 4, students move to advanced challenges in previously acquired skill, and they focus on important geometric concepts such as parallelism, perpendicularity, symmetry, and angle measurement for a variety of figures. At Grade 5, students perform increasingly difficult tasks with fractions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; they learn pre-algebra skills such as parenthetical placement, bracketing, and order of operations; and they are challenged to make good decisions in applying mathematical operations in various real-world situations.


At the middle school (Grades 6-8) level, students move through logical sequences such as those pertinent to ratio, rate, proportion, similarity, and congruence; and they cover many concepts that once were part of introductory courses in algebra and geometry in high school: algebraic functions; linear equations; and applications of the Pythagorean Theorem. At the high school (Grades 9-12) level, there is a specified sequence of skill acquisition, at the end of which students have mastered matrices, complex exponents, multivariable equations and inequalities, geometric proofs, trigonometric functions, and statistical probability. All of this prepares students for the highest level courses offered at the high school level, most especially calculus.


Similarly, the Common Core sequence offers great rigor and logical sequence for English language arts and for history, social studies, science, and technical subjects. As students move through the K-12 years, they are challenged to acquire increasingly sophisticated vocabulary; and to read a variety of literary forms (fables, folktales, poems, short stories, novels, historical texts, scientific tracts, and technical manuals) at a high level of reading comprehension. They engage in writing tasks throughout the K-12 years, and by the middle school and high school years have advanced to highly sophisticated levels of literary expression and research capability. They also have mastered skills pertinent to becoming discerning listeners and adroit speakers, including practice with oral poetic interpretation, dramatic performance, and oratorical expression.


Thus, Jim Abeler is clearly wrong on the matter of academic rigor. If students in Minnesota truly mastered curricula implemented according to these standards, they would walk across the stage much better educated than the graduates whom we now allow to claim high school diplomas.


And yet the reality is that we already have Minnesota state standards that are similar to these descriptive of the Common Core. But the education establishment comprised of education professors and the teachers and administrators trained in traditional departments, schools, and colleges of education inevitably find ways to circumvent any move toward increased rigor, enhanced teacher quality, or meaningful change in K-12 education. Ill-informed and politically purchased politicians participate in this denigration.


In this regard, sadly, any dispute over Common Core will be as irrelevant as all of the verbiage expended in discussion over the years as to Outcome Based Education, Best Practices, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top. Unlike the best education systems internationally, which are in fact centralized at the national level, we in the United States officially opt for local control, and any effort for overhaul of K-12 education ultimately dissipates under clouds of ignorance and irresponsibility.


This is what makes mobilization and activism at the central school district level so important, and underscores the critical significance of steps being taken by Bernadeia Johnson and her team at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to bring higher quality instruction and curriculum to students. Long disserved, these students now have genuine opportunity to succeed if MPS efforts to implement Shift programs pertinent to Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools come to fruition.


Those truly interested in K-12 education in Minneapolis need to be attentive and active in support of these efforts, in the knowledge that only hard work at the local school district level can impel the needed overhaul of public education in the United States.