Meeting Common Core guidelines has meant that teachers use workbooks or online text books to teach kids what they need to know for the Common Core assessments/tests.
To eliminate common core, you have to replace the text books (mostly digital), workbooks and curriculum.
Fortunately, the solution would be going back to the old one.
When one reads the list of Common Core guidelines for each grade, one may form one opinion, for or against, etc. As a teacher, I don’t think the list of standards (per grade) looks unreasonable.
BUT!!!!!...when you see the actual convoluted materials (or lack thereof) and long-winded, batty, and unnecessary “strategies” created to instill those same guidelines, or to “prove” whether a child meets the standards, that’s where I feel the true insanity begins. Not to mention, the materials have lazy errors within them that many a 7 year old has found on his or her own. No extra points for that :-/
Then come the state tests...questions that are hidden from public to avoid discussion and parsing. As if that’s not enough, then there are the rubrics used to grade those tests. One year there may be a fairly reasonable test, but a draconian rubric. Another year, a very confusing test, but a generous rubric. Year to year, there can be any combination or degree of those factors, across all districts, each time with entirely different tests per grade and subject, and new students (mostly) in each grade.
Then, after the fact, even after grading, the state may decide to discard certain questions due to too many complaints (if enough people can remember what they were, and bother to contact officials). In the middle of tests, there are also extra questions that were never meant to count, but are being “field tested”. Nobody knows which questions those are.
Schools are NOT given detailed feedback on exactly which questions each student got wrong, or which wrong answers they chose. Just think about that.
Schools are compared to each other even if one has a full magnet program and the other is heavy on special education. It is the same test for all.
Standards for spelling and grammar are not even tested, at least not in lower grades. There are virtually no materials given or time allotted to teach parts of speech/grammar, etc. I have seen an administrator throw a suggested (by a teacher) workbook across a room, saying workbooks do not work, language must be absorbed through reading.
Agree? Disagree? In any case, that’s the climate.
I could go on, but I’ll stop now.
Thanks for listening.