California got its first glimpse Wednesday of draft common-core standards in math and English language arts that, sight-unseen, the Legislature has put the state on a path to adopting this summer.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell immediately praised the “rigorous” draft standards as “well organized to give a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn … to succeed in both college and the workforce.” And a number of national organizations, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed them.

But others expressed caution and criticism, particularly about some of the math standards and sequence of learning them. Among those was Ze’ev Wurman, a high-tech executive from Palo Alto who helped develop California’s standards and assessments in the mid-1990s.

Wurman said common-core standards would not prepare California students to take Algebra in the eighth grade, as is current state policy, and may not fully prepare them even in ninth grade. After front-loading math in first and second grades, the proposed math standards slow down in middle school, creating gaps between California’s standards and common core. And elements of the state’s Algebra II standards, which the state’s four year colleges require for admission, are missing.

Common core is a product of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. They launched the initiative last year out of recognition that many states’ standards are weak, and some states – though not California — had lowered their standards to escape penalties under the No Child Left Behind Law. The idea was to create rigorous standards that would prepare students for college or for the workforce, while making America more economically competitive.

Pressure on states to adopt

State adoption is voluntary, but the Obama administration encouraged states by awarding substantial points in the Race to the Top applications to states that adopt common core. All states but Texas and Alaska agreed to do so.
The California Legislature set an Aug. 1 deadline for an up or down vote by the State Board of Education.

Common core will create the biggest change for California since it adopted state standards in 1997. In all likelihood, the state will have to create new assessments, buy new textbooks and retrain teachers.

Whether this will be worth the huge expense and effort is not yet clear. In coming days, state officials and teachers will be comparing standards by grade to see how closely they match up. After a decade, it was time to update and clarify California standards, and this would have been difficult to do so without reigniting math and reading wars of the ‘90s. Common core could help  achieve this.

But while common core will add rigor in many states,  it may not do so here, particularly in math. The state must adopt common core in its entirety, although the state can add 15 percent – or more (who’s measuring?) — of its own standards. The evaluation by the California State University and University of California systems will be important, since the final standards should line up with their freshman requirements.

Common core’s challenge has been to prepare students for both the workplace and college. There’s no research saying needs of the two are the same.

Core Knowledge, a national non-profit that campaigns for literature- and content-rich reading curriculums, praised the draft standards’ inclusion of suggested texts – poems, novels, and works of non-fiction – for every grade (Thoreau’s Walden Pond in the 11^th grade, or example). But Gary Hoachlander, president of ConnectEd, which advocates career and technical education programs in California, expressed disappointment over the lack of connection between standards and marketplace skills.

Even backers of common core have criticized the compressed time frame for adoption. Organizers are accepting comments on the draft standards only until April 2 – less than a month. And major changes at this point aren’t likely.

The legislation adopting common core also established a curriculum review committee,  which can recommend augmenting common core. Half of its members will be teachers.

It also could recommend adopting common core as a pilot program; that might be the best idea.

By John Fensterwald on March 11th, 2010