Why the Common in Common Core?

I attended six elementary schools. At the time all I really cared about was that, with each move, I had to learn new rules for four square and Chinese jump rope. (When we moved from California to Utah, there was even a whole new hop scotch board!) As I got older I realized that my education had suffered because the quality of education from school to school varied as greatly as the tether ball rules.

As a junior in high school I sat in my AP English class a little disgusted that my teachers had decided not to show up for class again. I didn't want to waste my time; I wanted to learn. I wondered if a friend who had decided to start attending high school in a nearby city was having a better experience - I think he did as that school district has a great reputation - and I daydreamed about getting a PhD in Education, becoming the Secretary of Education and streamlining learning objectives so that every child, no matter where they lived, could have a high-quality education.

When I started homeschooling, one of the most frustrating things for me was trying to figure out what my children should be able to do at a certain age. Was I pushing them too hard or not enough? What skills should they have by the end of their education? And how was I to be sure we accomplished whatever we should have accomplished by then?

What if something you expected to be standard wasn't?

I started researching Common Core because of the negative press it was getting, but the more I learned about it the more excited I became. Not only would this help children who had to move to different schools throughout their education, but this was kind of what I had dreamed about when I was a student and it was making my life as a homeschooling mom easier. Now I had a set of standards broken down for each grade level. I loved how the standards built on each other from year to year. My mind wasn't constantly wondering if my kids were falling behind students in public school. Here was a map on how to get my kindergartner to graduation, broken down into steps.  I read, printed out, posted the standards for each of my kid's grades and started to build my lesson plans around them, confident and relieved that if I focused on these things they would be receiving a great education.

Finding resources proved to be fun and exciting. Before, when I was looking for fun ways to teach I felt like I was building a car with spare parts from totally different models. Now, since teachers everywhere are building their lessons on these same standards it is easy to find great activities and worksheets. I imagine this is also helping teachers in public school. It makes sense that the more teachers are able to collaborate and share, the more time and energy they will have to focus on being good teachers for their students.

"My child is not common," is a slogan often seen on demonstrators' signs. Common can be a scary word. It brings to the mind "mundane," "ordinary," and "the lowest common denominator." However, common can also be comforting. We expect an Olive Garden in Seattle (if there was an Olive Garden in Seattle ☺) to have the same quality of food as an Olive Garden in San Francisco or San Antonio. "Common" would be worrisome if these were "fast food" quality standards, but they surpass most states previous standards and there is no rules saying that students, teachers, schools, districts, and state can't exceed the Common Core Standards. In fact, many states have added to them to tailor them to their state.

The standards do not call for a cookie cutter method of teaching. In fact, as I'll explain in a future post, the Common Core Standards are  actually designed to make each individual student become more involved in their own education.

The "common" in Common Core Standards stands for skills that we should expect every student to master just as we expect everyone we meet to have common decency or practice common courtesy. I believe that once people get to know what Common Core really is they will see it is just common sense.