The Common Core education standards have been criticized for many reasons, not all of them legitimate. Among other things, Common Core is sometimes denounced for teaching students about Islam or offering them new methods of learning math.
With all the misinformation about Common Core, it’s worth looking into what the national version of the standards actually say. Then you can judge for yourself which criticisms are valid and which are unfounded.
The full text of the standards are available on Common Core’s website. What’s not included: Any mention of Islam, the Quran, Arabic or Muslims. If your child has to learn about the Quran in school, don’t blame Common Core.
There are references to religious works, including the Bible. For example, eighth grade students should be able to “analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.” Common Core doesn’t require lessons about religious texts, but it does allow a teacher to use them in their lesson plans. So If you don’t like a religious reference in your child’s class, place blame squarely on the teacher, not Common Core.
Still, the standards often go beyond stating what students should be taught into specifying how it should be accomplished.
For example, the mathematics standards for first grade say students should know how to “tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.” That’s fairly straightforward. It doesn’t tell teachers how to teach time-telling, just that it needs to be accomplished.
Then again, the first grade math standards also say “Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).” Saying students should be able to add and subtract within 20 is one thing, but requiring specific strategies is another.
On RealClearPolicy, Rick Hess, the American Enterprise Institute’s Director of Education Policy Studies, points out other ways the standards blur the line between standards and mandating certain teaching methods.
For example, Common Core says reading in fourth grade should be evenly split between literature and informational texts, such as United States history books and science texts. By the 12th grade, informational texts should take up 70 percent of reading. The standards don’t specify which texts should be used, but do give several examples that teachers may feel pressured to use.
“It’s some of these shifts — like students reading fewer novels and having to wrestle with incomprehensible math worksheets — that have occasioned so much blowback,” Hess writes. “The supposedly misguided critics often seem more tuned in to the reality of the Common Core than the cheerleaders are.”
There are legitimate critiques of Common Core, and its opponents should stick to them and ignore those that have no basis in fact. Otherwise, Common Core advocates can simply point to the text of the standards and say, “Have you actually read Common Core?”
