By Kristin

There are reasonable concerns with implementing and holding teachers accountable for the Common Core Standards, but I'm still excited about them.  They scaffold backward from where a student needs to be at graduation to what she needs to master in kindergarten, they elminate the crazy inconsistencies we had between the states before, and while they're a little wordy they leave a lot of room for academic creativity in serving the children sitting before each teacher.  Before, our nation's academic standards were like a mall's food court – lots of different options, but few of them really good.

In math we were all over the place as a nation.  I've spent the morning looking up math standards that pre-date the Common Core for 1st grade in different states.  In Mississippi, students were expected to learn to "Analyze and interpret data
by using mathematical language such as more than, less than, etc.,"  but in South Dakota, where standards were organized by levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, 1st graders were "advanced" in geometry if they could "identify geometric figures regardless of
orientation."  

There's nothing inherently wrong with Mississippi's or South Dakota's standards for 1st grade math but it's silly to have 50 different sets of K-12 academic standards.  We're a big country and education is the territory of the states, I get it, but our students are not being well served when one child's zip code means he can earn a high school diploma without being able to solve for "x" while another child's means he aces the SAT. 

Students lucky enough to attend school in states or districts with strong, well-structured standards have had a clear advantage.  And let's be clear – "lucky enough" means your parents had the option of examining test scores and buying a home where students performed well and made it into excellent universities. In the '70s I took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in school every year, and the SAT has been the golden ticket since 1948.  Test scores as decision drivers for the privileged are not a recent thing.  

We can say, "Poverty is the problem," and wait around for that to change, or we can say, "Education can break the cycle of poverty."  I think giving each state a tool that helps prepare children for university starting before kindergarten is a crucial part of the arsenal.  And no, you don't have to go to university, but if you can't solve for "x" and you can't read complicated text it's not even an option.  Your choices have been limited before life's even really begun.

Common Core's introduction to 1st grade math standards lays out the basic skills:

(1) developing
understanding of addition, subtraction, and strategies for addition and
subtraction within 20; (2) developing understanding of whole number
relationships and place value, including grouping in tens and ones; (3)
developing understanding of linear measurement and measuring lengths as
iterating length units; and (4) reasoning about attributes of, and composing
and decomposing geometric shapes.

This 4-point guide in no way means you can't get creative with how you meet the needs of the children in front of you.  If you haven't checked out the Teaching Channel, you should.  This video shows one 1st grade teacher getting her students ready to multiply with fives by singing a song.  For those of us who feel intimidated at turning the lengthy text of the Common Core Standards into curriculum, there are many resources to provide ideas and examples.

I'm not saying Common Core is flawless.  As with any new system we need to pay attention to what works and what doesn't, and work nationally to continue to revise and tighten this tool so that it best serves students and works for teachers, but it's a big step in the right direction.