In a little more than a week, local schools will be opening their doors for the start of a new year and a new curriculum. This school year marks the full implementation of the Common Core State Standards. They provide a guideline for what K through 12 students should learn in math and English/language arts.
Many Maryland school officials received Common Core training over the past three summers but some say they still find it confusing. Deborah McClintock, a Baltimore County language arts resource teacher, says it has caused her “little heart palpitations.” “When it was way down the road, we thought we’d always have time for that and now we’re at the end of the road,” she said during a Common Core Training session held in Baltimore city.
But ready or not, school administrators and teachers will have to hit the ground running with the Common Core curriculum when classes begin on August 26th.
The standards require students to delve deeper into certain math concepts, write more and read more non-fiction; from 50 percent to 70 percent of their assignments. The goal is to help students think more critically and be better prepared for college or the job market.
The standards were designed to be benchmarks for educators, but Baltimore city math teacher Pamela Zavala worries that many teachers think they will have to follow the standards to the letter. “I think some (teachers) will think it’s all been given to them and take it and go and do what it says,” Zavala says. “In some cases, depending on your population, you will have to tweak things, some things will have to be changed. I feel it’s very overwhelming and teachers will need a lot of time to sort through it to make sure what they are doing is in the best interest of students.”
State and local officials say they are trying to convince teachers that Common Core standards do not limit their ability to make decisions that work for them in the classroom. “We’re still depending on teachers to come up with the most creative ways to engage and reach students,” says Sonja Santelises, Baltimore city schools’ chief academic officer. “It doesn’t mean we’ll have rows and rows of little robots sitting and receiving new curriculum.”
State Superintendent Lillian Lowery says they have “built a framework” for individual school districts to implement as they see fit. “We’re not saying each quarter, each day or week, you have to teach this,” she says. “But we are saying if students are to be prepared, they must get certain things along the way.”
According to a national study conducted in March by Washington, D.C.-based Hart Research Associates, 75 percent of teachers approve of the Common Core standards but 53 percent said they received inadequate or no training.
In Maryland, at least four teachers from every school were trained this summer on the standards to take back to their schools. Santelises says the city held additional training and is developing teams of teachers to help roll out the new curriculum. "We know the heart at making change at the classroom and school level is dependent on our ability to support teachers in making sense of Common Core," she says. "So we have a heavy focus in the district in developing high-performance teacher teams."
State officials say Common Core materials are available online and they will hold webinars monthly throughout the year. Superintendent Lowery says department officials also will visit schools to provide help. “I would say to a teacher explain to me exactly what you mean when you say you need more support,” she says. “Then we can be more targeted in how we support them.”
Donna Harris-Aikens, the National Education Association’s education policy director, says no district’s implementation is without flaws, but she thinks overall, Maryland is doing a good job. “We know that there are some educators across the country that have been handed binders and told this is what you will be teaching next year with no support,” Harris-Aikens says. “So the fact that Maryland is supporting their educators and doing this training is wonderful. We just hope other districts will do the same.”
But that’s not to say there won’t be glitches along the way. School officials say they realize this and are prepared to provide teachers and administrators with whatever help they may need.