Forty-five states and over 100 Catholic dioceses have adopted the national Common Core Standards for K-12 English Language Arts and math. This happened quickly, without any debate. Public and Catholic school parents did not have notice as to what was happening. Very few state legislators, even those on education committees, knew what was happening.Uggs Black Friday.
So, what did all these states and dioceses sign up for, and why such a growing, passionate opposition from parents?
If you listen to the promise of the Common Core, there’s a lot that sounds good, albeit much that causes suspicion. Private entities developed, and own, the Common Core. In the public roll-out of their project, they issued a slew of slogans about the standards. The Common Core initiative would be “state-led.” The standards themselves would be “rigorous” “internationally benchmarked,” and “research- and evidence-based.” Furthermore, “no state will see a decrease in the level of student expectations.” One problem with all this is that this roll-out occurred before the standards had been written. And, in a bid to get points in a massive federal grant competition, states signed onto the standards before the final draft was issued and without time to review the standards.
The developers and owners of the Common Core made these promises from the get-go, well before they had actually put the standards together. Unfortunately, the reality of the Common Core fell well short of the promise and will result in drastic changes to English language arts and math curriculum. By then, though, legions of politicians and education administrators had championed the Common Core. They had painted themselves into a corner.Uggs Black Friday Deals
With respect to math, Common Core takes students only to an incomplete algebra II course. One of the lead architects of the math standards, Jason Zimba, has admitted that Common Core prepares students for a nonselective community college, not a four-year university. Likewise, James Milgram, professor emeritus of Stanford University and the Common Core Validation Committee’s only mathematician (as opposed to math-education professor), rejected the standards because he concluded that they would leave American students at least two years behind their counterparts in the highest-achieving nations by 8th grade. Common Core replaces traditional axiomatic Euclidian geometry with transformational geometry, a method of teaching geometry that has failed everywhere in the world in which it has been implemented in K-12. And there is much more to be said about Common Core’s math deficiencies.
With respect to English language arts, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, perhaps this country’s most respected authority on English standards, criticizes the Common Core as “empty skill sets . . . [that] weaken the basis of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework.” Common Core greatly reduces the amount of classic fiction taught in ELA class in favor of informational texts. In their Publishers’ Criteria memorandum, the chief drafters state that English language arts “programs and materials designed for them will need to increase substantially the amount of literary non-fiction they include…..the standards emphasize non-fiction that is built on informational text structures rather than literary non-fiction such as memoirs or biographies.” It further sets forth as “Non-Negotiable Criteria for Alignment to CC” that “Grades 3-5 literacy programs shift the balance of texts and instructional time to 50% literature/50% informational.” And it continues that grades 6-12 programs should “shift the balance of texts and instructional materials towards reading substantially more non-fiction.”
Why should Catholics be concerned about this diminution of classic literature? Not only because study of classic literature has been proven best at developing truly literate students, but also because it is through literature that students learn about good and evil, grief and joy, failure and triumph — about the nature of humanity itself. The Common Core takes no interest in such non-job-related concepts.Ugg Boots Cyber Monday Deals.
Moreover, prominent child psychiatrists and psychologists have heavily criticized the standards as being age-inappropriate for young children. In that regard, Dr. Carla Horwitz of the Yale Child Study Center argues that “The Core Standards will cause suffering, not learning, for many, many young children.”
The philosophy of Common Core is antithetical to true Catholic education. It is a workforce-development scheme that treats the individual as human capital, to be shepherded where needed in aid of a centralized, corporatist economy. Schools are factories where children are trained, and the teachers are their supervisors. The focus of this is to produce workers who have the “skills” to “compete in the 21st century global economy.”
That is far removed from the Catholic understanding of education. In an address to American Catholic educators in New Orleans, Blessed John Paul II emphasized that the goal of Catholic education is “transmitting the full truth concerning the human person, created in God’s image and called to life in Christ through the Holy Spirit.” Archbishop J. Michael Miller, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, drew the contrast between this vision of education and the workforce-development model:
Unfortunately, far too many in government, business, the media, and even the educational establishment perceive education to be merely an instrument for the acquisition of information that will improve the chances of worldly success . . . . Such an impoverished vision of education is not Catholic.
Archbishop Miller specifically rejected the “skills and competencies” philosophy of education that is embodied in Common Core:
A Catholic school . . . cannot be a factory for the learning of various skills and competencies designed to fill the echelons of business and industry. . . . Education is not a commodity, even if Catholic schools equip their graduates with enviable skills.
Although Catholic education officials insist that they are “adapting” and not “adopting” the Common Core. That is not possible. One cannot teach more informational texts and simultaneously teach more classic literature. One cannot teach fuzzy math while emphasizing the traditional standard algorithms.
A group of Catholic scholars recently sent a letter to every bishop, asking them to intercede to return to traditional Catholic education. Parents, too, are rising. They are forming groups like Catholics for Classical Education (which has a listing of many other networks across the country) and Louisiana Catholics for Excellence in Education, which was launched last week as an on-line petition to their bishops. Catholics are looking to their bishops to reclaim control of Catholic education and to return to tradition and excellence.
You can learn more about the fight against Common Core at American Principles in Action and Truth in American Education.
{Ed Note: Please welcome this post from Mr. Emmett McGroarty & Ms. Jane Robbins. Mr. McGroarty is the Director of Education at American Principles Project, a 501c(3) organization and Ms. Jane Robbins is an American Principles Project senior fellow.}
