- April 18, 2024
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The Common Core State Standards were adopted by Florida in July 2010 and are being implemented by grade level. They have already been adopted in local elementary and middle schools, and are slated to be adopted by high schools in the 2013-2014 school year.
Here are some common misperceptions and facts about Common Core, paraphrased from the Common Core State Standards website (http://www.corestandards.org/resources/myths-vs-facts) and an interview with Flagler School District High School and Virtual Curriculum Instruction Director Diane Dyer:
Question: Were the Common Core State Standards created by the federal government?
Answer: The Common Core State Standards were created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the representative organizations of state governors and education commissioners. The standards are national, but not federal. However, the federal government could elect to make education grants contingent on states adopting the standards, or create grants specifically designed to help states implement the standards. At this point, individual states elect to participate in Common Core. Florida is one of 45 states to adopt the standards.
Question: Does Common Core allow the federal government to collect private information about students, or collect and release students' biometric information?
Answer: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is a federal law that protects childrens' privacy in the education sysem. Common Core does not allow collection fo any student information in violation of FERPA. FERPA has been updated to include an official definition of "biometric record," and to categorize hose records as "personally identifiable information" that may not be released without parental consent. FERPA can be viewed online at http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferparegs.pdf.
Question: Don't the Common Core State Standards set standards for all of the subject areas?
Answer: The Common Core State Standards set standards for English language arts and mathematics. Teachers in other subject areas are encouraged to integrate exercises requiring language arts and mathematics skills into their classes. A science teacher, for instance, might do that by requiring students to express their understanding of a scientific concept by creating a graph.
Question: Are the Common Core State Standards a national curriculum?
Answer: Educational standards specify what students are expected to know at various points in their school careers, and curricula specify how teachers help them acquire that knowledge. The Common Core State Standards are standards, not a curriculum. But they do come with recommendations for teachers attempting to implement them. The English language arts standards, for instance, come with a list of recommended texts for individual grade levels.
Question: Were the Common Core State Standards created with teacher input and research on practices in high-performing countries?
Answer: Teachers from across the country helped draft the standards, which are based on existing education frameworks and comparisons to states and nations with high education performance. The Common Core English and language arts standards build on the foundation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the standards for mathematics draw on information from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey, which compares U.S. students' maths and science achievement to that of students in other countries.
