The Boston Globe
ran a great story yesterday headlining the question: “Are
Teachers Really Ready for the Common Core?” After reading the
story, the only possible verdict is absolutely not.
Common Core sets new standards for what students should learn
and how they should learn it. But putting that into practice is
more difficult than waving a magic standards wand. A complete,
forced transformation of the American education system mandated by
national bureaucrats requires new textbooks, testing materials, and
training for teachers.
On that last front, it looks like teachers are somewhat averse
to throwing out everything they have been doing and learning a new
method just because Bill Gates
thinks its great. From The Boston Globe:
Despite research that says one-time workshops and short-term
training sessions have poor track records for changing teacher
practices, they continue to be the most common form of professional
development — even now that the Common Core is supposed to be
upending the old way of doing things, says [teacher Allison
Gulamhussein]. While 90 percent of teachers participated in
short-term training, just 22 percent observed classrooms in other
schools, according to a 2009 study published
by Learning
Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council),
an international organization focused on increasing effective
teacher training. Furthermore, the same study found that fewer than
half of teachers who participated in training considered it useful.
Still, districts shell out money on professional development, as
much as 5 percent of the total budget in some places before the
recession. Districts also get financial help for this purpose from
the federal government and spent more than $1 billion in federal
funds on such training in the 2012-2013 school year. Boston’s
education department spent about $5.5 million on professional
development in fiscal 2014, up nearly $500,000 from the previous
year, according to documents the district publishes online.
Officials say additional money is allocated for teacher training
from other areas of the budget.Experts argue that this much is clear: If the Common Core is
going to live up to expectations, teacher training needs to change,
and fast.
The story evaluates teacher training programs in Massachusetts,
a state that is by all accounts ahead of the curve on Core
implementation. Still, many are skeptical that training helps at
all—and even more are skeptical that the trainers themselves
understand Common Core requirements.
Even if Common Core eventually boosts student
performance—and the evidence of that is
underwhelming—nobody in school today is going to
benefit from it. Students will flounder under the instructions of
teachers whose methods are misaligned to the curriculum, textbooks,
and tests.
What a mess.
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