What Have The Common Core Bundles Wrought?

[HiPointDem]

In New York City, the Common Core has brought with it bundles - or as the DOE describes them, "aligned tasks embedded in a unit of study." At my school, we are obligated to administer a minimum of two bundles in each major subject. It can take weeks to plow through the bundles with all their attachments (the 6th grade special ed class has been working on the same unit since Martin Luther King Day). I refer to them as "piles." Why do I have such a low opinion of the tasks designed to "support schools?"

Before Easter vacation, I looked at a hallway bulletin board. It proudly displayed the culminating task for an English assignment. I saw ten essays written by ten different students each of which said the exact same thing. Each essay made the same arguments. Each essay cited the same evidence. Each essay used the same transition words. It was a model of uniformity.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. And then I looked at my own bulletin board. I don’t teach English. I teach another subject which has been similarly “blessed” with piles, I mean bundles. And there bright and bold for all the world to see were ten examples of student work each espousing the same reasoning, the same ideas, the same answers.

I used to take pride in the work I did as a teacher. I worked for hours creating projects for my students that offered multiple ways to demonstrate the learning they were doing. Now I work with pre-made piles that demand uniformity. How do students feel about this one size fits all approach? Do other teachers feel as I do? You know... ashamed.

http://exasperatededucator.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-have-bundles-wrought.html

[mbperrin]

1. Yes, I'll never know where all the current desire for just one method, one answer

one way is coming from.

Differentiation is out the window, as well as innovation.

It's a total mystery to me. Mao couldn't get this level of uniformity.

[HiPointDem]

2. it's coming from the same forces that brought you mass production. capitalism. how can they

sell prepackaged curriculum, tests, teaching materials & scripts if there isn't one method, one answer, one way?

and how can they turn teaching over to $10/hr temps if there isn't one method, one answer, one way?

we're talking about a global business model, baby.

[mbperrin]

3. Yes, but so shortsighted. When you have a generation that cannot innovate,

react, or change, the rest of your industries go to hell and quickly.

My old economics professor did say that quarterly reports would be the death of the nation - that requiring financials every 90 days meant that the longest planning horizon would be 90 days.

Looks like he was right.

[HiPointDem]

4. usa/europe are being abandoned. the future of profits is asia, then africa -- the last frontier of

dirt cheap labor & super-profits.

they don't need american 'generations,' they can use some other young people for workers (labor & 'intelligence') and let ours rot.

[mbperrin]

5. I believe they will be shocked in Africa - real culture shock for them there.

I believe Asia will and is in the process of co-opting them now - the Chinese were the first commercial and trading civilization after all.

But I won't shed a tear for them.


Nor am I shedding a tear for us, because like many other teachers in the country, I take a few weeks to teach the kids how to pass their "high stakes tests" and then I can do what I like and that students will find of actual value.

Or at least many of them thought it was of some value after I see them years later.

Outwardly conform, inwardly be free. The most valuable lessons I learned at A&M many years ago.