Common Core Standards vs. Curriculum

There still seems to be a lot of people out there who believe that Common Core is just standards and not actually curriculum, and after a recent conversation with someone regarding this, I googled it, hoping to find an easy answer to provide. However, when I googled it, the first page of finds was junk from the Common Core websites themselves. So I'm spending a few minutes to clear it up and hopefully have this show up in searches for people who are looking for the reality and don't want to have to spend a lot of time digging for it.

After some digging myself, the first explanation I found came from an article in The Washington Post. It was written by "Award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York [who] was once a supporter of the Common Core but came to be a critic after her state began to implement the initiative." The article speaks to way more than just the issue of standards vs curriculum, but like I said, I'm pulling it out and giving it its own post for Google indexing. I'm also posting the actual video she refers to, rather than just a link to it. Ms. Burris writes...

Of course the standards seek to influence instruction. Unlike previous standards that were statements of content matched to grade level, the Common Core standards embed 12 Instructional Shifts.

Here is an example. This is a pre-Common Core Kindergarten standard from Massachusetts.

Use objects and drawings to model and solve related addition and subtraction problems to ten.

It is clean, clear and developmentally appropriate.

Here is the equivalent Common Core standard:

Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 18 = 10 +8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

Notice the difference. The Common Core insists upon the use of a particular method of math instruction (decomposing numbers) which you can see demonstrated here.

Although this may be helpful in increasing understanding for some students, it should be up to a teacher to use it, or not use it, as a strategy. Instructional strategies have no place in state standards, and indeed they are noticeably absent from other national standards, including those of high performing Finland.

You can read the article by Carol Burris, in its entirety, here. And I did previously blog about the "standards" actually being curriculum here, although without the help of a video to understand it.