Friday Interview: Common Core Questions Covered | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The authors of this post are the CJ Staff of the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    JLF's Stoops hits highlights from his Q&A primer on school standards

Terry Stoops
    RALEIGH  -  Parents and taxpayers continue to ask questions about new Common Core standards as they are implemented in North Carolina's public schools. Five months after releasing a question-and-answer primer on Common Core, the John Locke Foundation recently released a revised, expanded version of that primer. It tackles 60 key issues in a Q&A format. Dr. Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation director of education studies, discussed Common Core with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)

    Martinez: Tell us what Common Core means. What is it?

    Stoops: Common Core is a set of standards developed by a handful of Washington, D.C.-based groups, including the National Governors Association, Achieve Incorporated, and the Council of Chief State School Officers. And these are K-12 standards in English language arts and mathematics that have been adopted by North Carolina and 44 other states. And they adopted them in 2010, and they are now implemented in our public schools.

    Martinez: Does this mean that curriculum in North Carolina is changing in English and math?

    Stoops: Not quite. We adopted standards, and standards are broad outlines of what should be taught and when it should be taught, whereas curricula [are] a lot more specific. For example, a standard would tell us to learn the parts of speech, but it wouldn't tell us exactly how to teach that or what kind of passages to use in order to teach parts of speech, what sentences to put before students so that they can learn it.

    So the specifics are left up to the classroom teacher, but the standards  -  what they learn, the broad goals of what they should learn  -  are established by these standards, the Common Core standards, and the teachers are obliged to follow these standards and the sequence the standards establish.

    Martinez: Was anyone in North Carolina involved in this at all?

    Stoops: Very few people in North Carolina were involved in developing the standards. Recently, our superintendent of public instruction, June Atkinson, says that she was there from the beginning, and we also have some professors from North Carolina State, for example, involved in some of the development of standards, or more specifically, checking to see if the standards are correct or consistent with research. They didn't really develop the standards themselves. It was written by a small group of people and verified by these others. So, essentially, North Carolina was not an integral part of the development of these standards.

    Martinez: Terry, based on your description, I can imagine that people are thinking, "Well, that sounds pretty good. A bunch of learned people got together, and they took a look at English and math and said, 'You know what, we can do better in this country.'" You, however, have concerns about this. Why?

    Stoops: Well, I have lots of concerns about this. Just following up on your point, I think these standards are probably better than what North Carolina had. But are they the best standards? Are they the highest standards that we could establish for our public schools? No, they're not. The math standards have been panned by just about everyone, every expert out there who has examined them. And there's debate about the English language standards. But it should be noted that one of the complaints about the English language standards is that a lot of the fiction  -  the classical literature that students had read previously  -  is no longer going to be part of the curriculum. They are going to read so-called "information texts." These include speeches from the president, articles from Time magazine, and that sort of thing. So this represents a fundamental shift in the way that we teach our kids.

    Martinez: That's very interesting because I would say speeches of the presidents: OK, that sounds fine to me. You want to know what presidents were saying during their time and study that. But does that mean they're not going to be getting any sort of historical perspective on the great writers of our time?

    Stoops: That's right. And history and social studies are supposed to be incorporated in the English language arts standards, although it's not quite clear how that's going to happen. But those classical American authors  -  for example, the James Fenimore Coopers  -  we're not going to see students reading those things anymore. We're going to see them reading short essays and things that are pulled from, essentially, 21st-century publications rather than 19th- or 20th-century works of great American authors.

    Martinez: When it comes to the math standards, it's interesting as well because we have a lot of conversation about the need for students these days to have a more rigorous curriculum because so many of our jobs of today and the future are based in math, science, engineering, etc. Are these math standards more rigorous?

    Stoops: They're problematic for several reasons. First, the math standards put algebra in ninth grade rather than in eighth grade. There has been a movement in other nations for students to start learning algebra in eighth grade. These are the highest-performing nations in math, both in the Pacific Rim and in Europe. The Common Core standards place algebra in ninth grade.

    It also has an approach to geometry that is an untested way of teaching geometry. The sequence that it sets up for geometry is something brand new, and actually a lot of teachers are going to have to learn how to re-teach geometry because of the way that the standards set them up. So these are just two of the many reasons why the math standards don't have a lot of support out there.

    And not only do they not have a lot of support from opponents of Common Core, but there were some proponents of Common Core  -  some people who were charged with looking at the standards  -  who believe that the math standards are woefully inadequate.

    Martinez: So supporters have a little bit of concern. Opponents have concern. It brings up the question of whether or not there's politics involved in any way in the development of this. Is this a Republican program or a Democratic program? Anything like that going on here in Common Core?

    Stoops: Both Republicans and Democrats are to blame. And many people wonder: How did Republicans get on board with Common Core, because some of the most vocal proponents of Common Core, like Jeb Bush, are Republicans? And the reason is simple. They have allegiance to one of the groups that developed the Common Core  -  the National Governors Association. So you find a lot of Republican governors are supportive of Common Core because of the involvement of the National Governors Association.

    But the Democrats have been more active in promoting Common Core via the federal government. We adopted the Common Core based on the belief that adopting it would allow us to gain millions of federal dollars. And we did, through the Race to the Top program.

    Not only that, the federal government is actually bankrolling the development of Common Core tests, at a tune of around $360 million. So the federal government is throwing literally hundreds of millions of dollars into Common Core tests and the development of additional standards, and this is the way the Common Core was adopted by 45 states. They wanted that federal money, and by adopting Common Core, they believed they would get it.

    Martinez: You believe there is a better way to approach trying to come up with a better standard for North Carolina students. What would that be?

    Stoops: Let's look at the best standards that have been developed by states, and let's adopt those. We have already had in the United States superior standards that have been developed by states like Massachusetts and Virginia and various other states. I don't understand why we needed to start from scratch when, for example, Virginia's social studies standards have been praised universally. Massachusetts had fantastic English language arts standards. And they chose to adopt the Common Core standards.

    So it's very strange that we started from scratch when states had already developed superior standards. And it's very unfortunate that this is what's going to be replacing those superior standards.

    Martinez: When will this be implemented in North Carolina?

    Stoops: We already have the standards in place and tests based on those standards. The Common Core tests will be coming, if scheduled, next year.
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