What is "Common Core"?

I should know this, but I really don't. What is "Common Core" in terms of education?

My wife tried to explain it to me the other day, as I asked her.  It's been in the news around here for a variety of reasons.  The appointed head of the state's education department seems to accept it, the Superintendent of Education (probably not the correct name of her position, whose controversial and the subject of court and legislative battles, does not.  One teacher I know hats common core.

So, what exactly is it, and how does it function?

Postscript

I'm bumping this topic back up, as it seems to be an issue here locally that simply will not go away, and its one that I don't grasp.

Because I don't grasp it, I'm also linking this item in from the always insightful Ramblings of a Teacher, Redskins Fan and Scrapbooker blog.

Something that's really caught me off guard is the extent to which people locally have extremely deeply felt opinions on this issue.  In a region where really devise issues usually don't come up in the text of education, this one has.  Frankly, I feel it's become such an issue that it's being warped and distorted at this point.

This morning I read in the paper that last Saturday Governor Mead was censured by two county GOP caucuses.  That in and of itself simply astounds me.  That a GOP body would censure a GOP governor at a time when the GOP is so dominant here is amazing.  That reflects in part a divide in the party between the traditional GOP and its tea party elements, but that divide seems to be most noticeable on education topics.

It really came out the legislature before last when the legislature acted to remove the Superintendent of Education's powers by way of a bill known in the legislature, and now known to history, as SF104.  That bill, according to what we read in the newspaper and according to any insiders who might talk to you, was principally drafted to address what the legislature thought to be inappropriate actions by Superintendent Hill.  I'm not posting on that topic here, and I'm frankly highly unlikely to, but I will note that a person doesn't have to have thought SF104 constitutionally problematic but still find Hill to be problematic as well.  FWIW, the recently released audit of the department of education is now online.

I note all this, however, as Common Core seems to get wrapped up in this somehow, and I suspect that it's somehow getting a bit distorted.  Superintendent Hill is an opponent of Common Core.

I don't know why she's an opponent of Common Core, and of course I don't understand Common Core, so perhaps that's not surprising.  I think, however, that it is probably due to her being in the Tea Party end of the GOP (which doesn't make all the opponents Tea Party adherents, or even members of the GOP) and therefore she would presumably have a fairly hard core view of local control.

This has spread to such a degree that I heard a commenter at a school board meeting express concerns about the NCSD bond issue due to Common Core.  The bond issue has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with this topic whatsoever.  Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that some years ago the state mandated that the funding of school construction projects be through the state, but that at the same time the state would not pay for "enhancements."  Like all laws, that law is imperfect and as a result somethings that are not enhancements at all have been handled that way, and so now local districts have to fund construction of these features by another means so that their schools can really be complete.  Bond issues are very strictly tied to a specific purpose and only run for a specified time, but none the less some folks who have been focused on Common Core are now jumpy about them, for reasons of misconception.  For example, I heard the noted speaker voice a concern that the bond issue will be used to fund classes mandated under Common Core. That's completely in error, as the bond would be used to fund the construction/reconstruction of swimming pools for the high schools, install safety features in existing schools of all types (which the new ones are built with) and fund some equipment for the CAP program, which is completely outside of the Common Core.

Anyhow, there sure seems to be a lot of opposition to Common Core.  I fear that if a person joined the debate late, the topic may be so confusing that figuring it out might be darned near impossible.

Postscript II

Trying to return to this blog's focus, and also noting something that's somewhat on point here, I can't help but recall that Donald Hough, in his classic The Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole, found it endlessly amusing that a grade school he dropped in on, in Teton County Wyoming, was learning about a Medieval battle, the Battle of Crecy if I recall correctly.  He couldn't  see why the 1346 pivotal battle of The Hundred Years War would be something that the young students of Jackson Hole should be required to learn. He was informed by the teacher that the State of Wyoming required it.  I'm sure that was correct.  Hough wrote about Jackson Hole in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when the local residents remained ranchers and Wyoming towns people during the winter, and the county was taken over by tourists in the summer.*

The interesting thing about that is that it would have indicated a pretty strict set of guidelines at the time.  I don't know when I learned about the Battle of Crecy, but I'm sure it wasn't in grade school.  I'm also sure it wasn't in junior high and I doubt it was in high school.  I probably learned about it when I took Medieval History in university.**  I'm not certain what that says about state imposed standards at the time, other than that they were apparently different than later and in surprising ways.

Postscript III

One thing I should note, and which really colors my views on this topic, is that I may be nostalgic about certain things, if that's the right word, or I may take an open view about certain topics in regards to whether things have improved in real terms or not, but about education, here locally, I am not.

We did not receive a bad education in the local schools.  That would not be true at all. And based upon what I know of other areas, ours stacked up and served us quite well. But they are doing a better job of it today, and there's no doubt about that.

I occasionally will hear people lament the current schools, and suggest that at some point in distant personal memory, things were done much better.  I can't speak for the schools prior to the late 1960s, but I did enter school in the late 1960s and experienced them through the entire 1970s and graduated in 1981.  The local schools here are better, including the schools I went to in that time frame.  No doubt about it.

Kid's coming out of the same schools I went through here today have a better education, with more credit hours, and more of a focus on where they are going once they get out than we did.   

What does that mean in regards to Common Core?  Well, maybe nothing, or maybe something.  If there are areas we can do better, and we can (which is part of the reason that I hope the bond issue passes) we should.  If Common Core aids in that, I'm for it.  If it detracts, I'm against it.  I just don't know.

But here locally, what I do think we keep in mind that nostalgia, to the extent it exists, regarding education of two, three or four decades ago is misplaced.  I sometimes hear that, with there being the suggestion that we should return to an education of some prior era almost remembered as a golden era.  Well, I went to school in that era, or an era that some claim to be that era, and it just isn't so.  Some of our grade school teachers, who were generally pretty good, lacked the sort of certification that they all have today.  And the graduation requirements we had then were ridiculously low compared to those today, which continue to increase.  My son has probably received a better education at the high school level today than I had by the time I graduated, and he's a sophomore.  I'm not saying that our education was bad, but looking back there were definitely some areas that the system failed us in back then, mathematics being the prime one that comes to mind for me.  I basically had to make up three years of high school math in my first year of college, which wasn't easy, and shouldn't have had to occur. Today it wouldn't occur.

Indeed, with the CAP proposals, some kids will start coming out of high school not only up to par, and not behind, but with a big head start on a college career.
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*While having nothing to do with the topic of this post whatsoever, I first read Hough's book in the 1990s, by which time much had clearly changed but at which time a great deal actually remained the same in Jackson Hole. The book was in my father's book collection, and I'd just recently been in Jackson Hole when I read it.

I don't know that I could stand to read the book today, so much about Jackson Hole has changed. As late as the early 1990s there remained a fair population of locals that lived in the town year around. Since then, the town's reputation as a place for the wealthy has altered Teton County nearly beyond recognition for those who remember it when it was a toehold in the wilderness and still a bit of a ranch town.  I'm not saying that Jackson is a bad place, but in an Iris Dement fashion, the town that was is really gone now.

**My undergraduate was in geology, but I took so many history courses that by my graduation date I nearly had enough credits for a BA in history.  Medieval History was taught by an excellent professor by the last name of Harper.