With temperatures getting into the mid-80s this week, it will feel like summer settling in on the path around the Falls. With the temperatures heating up, things on the political wire heated up at the end of last week when Gov. Walker announced that he was requesting that the state Legislature repeal the Common Core Standards.
The request received a fair amount of attention in the media, and that may have been the intention. From a practical standpoint, the Legislature does not reconvene until January, well into the dead of winter. By that time, discussion on the Common Core might have cooled off; at least we hope so.
For some members of the general public, the discussion might not make a whole lot of sense. Is this about all students being commonly required to use Apple computers? No, although the use of technology is woven into the Common Core here and there.
Discussion about educational standards started to get greater attention a little over 30 years ago in 1983 with the publication of “A Nation at Risk.” The publication was put together by the National Commission on Excellence in Education during President Reagan’s administration. The gist of the report was that students in American schools were falling behind students in other countries.
One of the many responses to the report was a movement in states to create sets of standards of what students should know and do after their educational experience.
There was a time when teachers were sort of like independent operators. Some welcomed their students at the start of the school year on the first day and closed the classroom. Nine months later, they opened the door and let the kids out for the summer. Just what was taught in that classroom during the school year was anyone’s guess, because there were only general guidelines about the curriculum for each grade or subject area.
Beginning in the early 1990s, the standards movement started taking off in the states. Developing a set of standards in each grade and subject area for what students should know and be able to do is a lot of work. Back then, after spending some time and energy starting from scratch, Wisconsin looked at Virginia’s standards, tweaked them just a bit and adopted them as the Wisconsin standards.
They went a long way to organizing the school curriculum to help make sure there were no gaps or duplications, but they left a lot to be desired.
About a half-dozen years ago, educational leaders from a number of states put together a much more comprehensive set of standards, beginning with reading/language arts and math. Four years ago, Wisconsin was one of the first states to adopt what came to be known as the Common Core State Standards.
It has been a journey of four years to implement these standards. They set the expectation bar much higher for our students. Teachers have been trained in the standards, curricula have been revised, and materials have been purchased to cover the material.
Generally, educators agree that these are a great improvement over the previous standards and make a lot of sense. Districts still have the opportunity to tweak the standards as they put them into place at the local level, but greater consistency as to what is being taught in Wisconsin’s 400-plus school districts make sense, given the greater mobility of families with young children.
The suggestion that the Common Core Standards should be repealed after putting this much time and energy getting them in place would not be wise and suggests a lack of understanding of the work that has gone into the process. Throwing the baby out with the bath water seems to suggest that the state of Wisconsin has the luxury of time and money to start with a blank sheet of paper and begin the process all over again.
Based on the decline in state support for public education in Wisconsin, that is not the case. Even more disheartening is the lack of appreciation for the work of educators these past few years to implement the new standards. In the end, the heat of the political season, not the summer sun, seems to be the real factor behind the request to repeal the standards.
We have more important things to do with our time than argue if the Common Core Standards are some type of federal plot to take over how we run our classrooms. Stirring the education pot might make good headlines, but it does nothing for our students.
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