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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Asked and answered up thread[/quote]

More questions than answers.[/quote]

I don't have time to answer you, so I will take a page from a PP's book, and just link to someone's blog.

http://neatoday.org/2013/05/10/six-ways-the-common-core-is-good-for-students/

A few quotes:

“I haven’t been able to do that in years because of the push to cover so many things. Time is tight, especially because of all the benchmarks and high-stakes testing,” Mili says. “So I’ve had to put the fun, creative activities aside to work on drill and skill. [b]But the Common Core streamlines content, and with less to cover, I can enrich the experience, which gives my students a greater understanding[/b].”

When students can explore a concept and really immerse themselves in that content, they emerge with a full understanding that lasts well beyond testing season, says Kisha Davis-Caldwell,[b] a fourth-grade teacher at a Maryland Title 1 elementary school[/b].
“I’ve been faced with the challenge of [b]having to teach roughly 100 math topics[/b] over the course of a single year,” says Davis-Caldwell. “The Common Core takes this smorgasbord of topics and removes things from the plate, [b]allowing me to focus on key topics [/b]we know will form a clear and a consistent foundation for students.”

One way Powers says [b]the standards ratchet up the rigor[/b] is by requiring [b]more nonfiction texts to be included in lessons on works of fiction[/b], and vice versa. She uses Abraham Lincoln as an example.  A lesson could start with “O Captain! My Captain!”, the extended metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman about the death of Lincoln, and incorporate the historical novel Assassin, which includes a fictional character in the plot. Then she’d follow that with the nonfiction work, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, and have students also look at newspaper clippings from the time.

The Common Core [b]allows educators to take ownership of the curriculum[/b] — it puts it back into the hands of teachers, who know what information is best for students and how best to deliver that information.

Peter Mili says the key word to focus on is “common.” He believes [b]there is far too much academic variability from state to state[/b] and not enough collaboration. With the Common Core State Standards, “the good things that may be happening in Alabama can be shared and found useful to educators in Arizona because they are working on the same topics.”

Cheryl Mosier, an Earth Science teacher from Colorado, says she’s most excited about the Common Core because it’ll be [b]a challenge for all[/b] students, not just the high achieving students, which Mosier and her colleagues say will go a long way to closing achievement and opportunity gaps for poor and minority children. [b]If students from all parts of the country — affluent, rural, low-income or urban — are being held to the same rigorous standards, it promotes equity in the quality of education and the level of achievement gained.[/b]

“With the Common Core, we’re not going to have pockets of really high performing kids in one area compared to another area where kids aren’t working on the same level,” she says “Everybody is going to have a high bar to meet, but it’s a bar that can be met with support from – and for — all teachers.”

Davis-Caldwell’s [b]Title 1 school is in a Washington, D.C., suburb[/b]. In the D.C. metro area, like in other areas in and around our nation’s cities, there is a high rate of mobility among the poorest residents. Students regularly move from town to town, county to county, or even state to state – often in the middle of the school year.

There has been no alignment from state to state on what’s being taught, so [b]when a fourth-grade student learning geometry and fractions in the first quarter of the school year suddenly moves to Kansas in the second quarter, he may have entirely different lessons to learn and be tested on.[/b]

It also helps teachers better serve their students, says Davis-Caldwell. When teachers in one grade level focus consistently and comprehensively on the most critical and fundamental concepts, their students move on to the next grade level [b]able to build on that solid foundation[/b] rather than reviewing what should have been learned in the previous grade.

If a student who was taught how to think critically and how to read texts for information and analysis can explain the premise behind a mathematical thesis, she’ll have options and opportunities, Mili says. Students with that kind of education will be able to decide what kind of career path to follow or whether they want to attend a university or any kind of school because they were [b]prepared to do a higher level of work that is expected in our society and our economy.[/b]

Student success is the outcome every education professional works so tirelessly toward, and the Common Core will help them get there if it’s implemented well, according to the panel of educators.

“Yes, it’s an extra workload as a teacher, and it’s difficult…but [b]it’s for the betterment of the students[/b],” says Davis-Caldwell. “And if we keep that our focus, I don’t see why we can’t be successful.”[/quote]

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