Conference call with Gene Wilhoit

Just got off of a conference call with CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit. He wanted to discuss the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and answer questions that teachers had over it. I know I have said this many times before, but it is great to know that those who are creating and pushing for these reforms are reaching out to teachers and want their input. Having never had an audience with people in the position of Gene or Sec. of Education Duncan before this, it is comforting to know that teacher's opinions are still valued when it comes to national educational policies.

The Common Core Standards, as of right now, are just for Language Arts and Math. Science, Art, and others are currently meeting and Social Studies, according to Gene, "will be the trailer to this," merely because there is a lot of disagreement over its content. The CCSSI came out of the very different state standards that are currently in place in terms of proficiency. The goal was to determine what states can agree upon in proficiency and content standards and come up with "common" core standards amongst all states. It was great to hear from Gene that what was agreed upon was the outcome, not the process. "We are not proscribing how one teaches," Gene said.

These new standards are set on what Gene called "a new bar -- college and career-ready expectations." The key questions they kept asking throughout this process was, "What is important to be able to do to be college and career ready?" What they were seeing is that what we currently are teaching and focusing on was not preparing students for college and the career world. It just wasn't applicable to what students needed to be leaving high school with. So it is based on changing the standards to be aligned with the following:

-What is the essential content?
-What are the applications of this content?

It seems like we are going to be moving away from facts in our content areas and in the direction of focusing on specific skills that are more applicable and adapted to the jobs that today's students will be working in. Gene said that it "is not about memorizing facts, but about using it and applying it."

With Language Arts, it was interesting to hear Gene speak about how right now, we are seeing a tiering-down of reading materials starting at middle school, and high school's are currently reading middle school-level material. So the expectations will be increased.

The questions I had were about whether schools were going to be able to hold students back until they show "mastery" in the standards and whether we can actually have the same expectations for students in every part of the country. It seems like a great plan, but in reality there seems to be flaws in its application and enforcement. Can a student in every rural, urban, wealthy, poor, small, and large school, and from different socio-economic backgrounds and communities, really achieve the exact same levels of mastery? We'll see.