Back to School with Common Core

Back to School with Common Core

One evening at a Mexican restaurant in Poulsbo, I picked up a copy of some Spanish language newspaper (La Raza?). I always feel that eating in a Mexican restaurant is more meaningful if you browse through the latest news on inmigración or fútbol while munching on your chips y salsa. This was towards the end of August, so the start of school was just around the corner.  Appropriately enough, the periódico had a headliner about Los Estándares Académicos—the Common Core State Standards.  Let’s call them the EAs from now on.

These have been looming on the horizon for some time, creating a mixture of anticipation and dread.  I don’t encounter too many people that express a genuine excitement about them, although it seems the younger teachers are more accepting of and, sometimes, enthusiastic about them.  We older teachers, battle-weary after decades of standards writing, revising, word-smithing, aligning, spiraling, assessment writing, and testing are a little less eager to face yet another revolutionary program.

Some people, not necessarily educators, seem to view the oncoming CC with actual fear.  To test this, I did an internet search (using Bing for a change) on “Common Core State Standards” and got a whopping 151 million results. I then followed it up with a search adding the word “criticisms.” This resulted in almost 41 million results, some with titles like “The War Against Common Core” raising fears that there’s a conspiracy afoot.  And fear seems to be at the root of the reactionary voices: fear of losing a sense of control in a local school system, a fear of lowering standards, or a fear of government-imposed ideologies.  Bueno, since this blog is NOT about politics, or even public education per se, I would suggest reading  this article from the National Review which, from a right-of-center perspective, nicely sums up the CC issue and hopefully allays some fears.

The Spanish article summed it up quite succinctly.  It first stated what the EAs are: puntos de referencia para medir el conocimiento y la capacidad de los estudiantes durante cada año escolar.  It then pointed out the justification for them, referring to the fact that different states have different academic standards, kids with a calificación of a “C” in one state, could possibly earn an “A” in another.  But I was more interested in the graphics illustrating the article.

Delivering all the positive messages of the EAs was a brightly smiling female cartoon character of the “big-head-little-body” type. She was sort of fairy godmother of public education, wielding her pointer like a magic wand. Her word balloons were in Spanish, but her extremadamente dark hue and straight hair made her hard to pinpoint ethnically. Her pearl necklace and dress-suit definitely gave her a professional air. But what I was most impressed with was the decision of the cartoonist to give her a modest physique, wider in the waistline than your typical female cartoon. She’s not Twiggy or Barbie.  She’s a slightly chunky, ethnically ambiguous lady. No chicas will suffer anorexia by comparing themselves to her, and no particular groups can be insulted by her. That’s an education in itself.