News Brief

04/03/13

Voices: Common Core – Friend or Foe?

EdNews Colorado (04/03/2013) Keigan, JessicaHigh school teacher Jessica Keigan says Common Core presents an opportunity to transform teaching and learning. She says the standards provide a number of opportunities for collaboration, including the use of virtual networks like the Center for Teaching Quality's Collaboratory. This kind of support can help ensure that students meet higher achievement goals, and Keigan says her students have benefited from the sharing of instructional practices and strategies and the wide array of experience and creativity she has drawn from. She says, "My students have risen to the challenge and have flourished. Their critical thinking, ability to utilize text to support their own ideas and versatility with a wide variety of text has surprised me." She and her colleagues also have built performance-based assessments to monitor students' critical thinking and analysis skills. She also notes that assessments need time to catch up to Common Core and that discussions about equity across socioeconomic groups, authentic assessment and data collection tools, quality classroom instruction, and the balance between autonomy and accountability must continue. She says, "The Common Core could be a game-changer. Today's teachers have the potential to improve the instruction all students receive. But administrators and policymakers must support our efforts. Teachers need time for collaboration to adjust and improve our teaching ... And we need to be able to take part in big instructional decisions, to define what is working and refine what is not."
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