Today the Common Core State Standards Initiative is releasing proposed standards for what students should learn in K-12 English and math. As Nick Anderson writes in the Washington Post article about the announcement: “Instituting new academic standards would reverberate in textbooks, curriculum, teacher training and student learning from coast to coast.” Eventually, we can suppose, it will get to the kids — most certainly not in anything close to equal opportunities to learn. The Exeter faculty will make sure their students master the concepts; at Dunbar not so much.
There is a wonderful new way to have a common core for what students learn: use the global knowledge commons emerging online. For example, let’s hope all of the books are put openly online that the governors and state school superintendents have proposed in the standards they are announcing today. Otherwise students at Dunbar may have more trouble locating a hardcopy of them all than youngsters in Evanston and Peoria.
The Washington Post gives this example of a math common core standard: “Eighth-graders would be expected to use linear equations to solve for an unknown and explain a proof of the Pythagorean theorem on properties of a right triangle — cornerstones of algebra and geometry.” Happily there are many places in the online commons to learn about Pythagorean proofs. Click the image for an example.
