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Meeting Students Needs within Scripted Curriculum

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Meeting Students Needs within Scripted Curriculum

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This article is a little lengthy, but it describes ways that students needs can be met while using a scripted curriculum.

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Many teachers who use scripted curriculum believe that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

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This article talks a little bit about the shift to scripted curriculum and how this has impacted teachers and students.

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Making Schools Work with Hedrick Smith . School-By-School Reform . Scripted Lessons | PBS

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Eric Smith, the superintendent responsible for success in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina, advocates the scripted strategy. He argues that in order to create change on a large scale, schools must get on the same page with their curriculum so that teachers know what is expected.

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I thought this was a really great way to describe the creativity that is lost with scripted curriculum.

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LLI is one of the most commonly used reading intervention programs and it is scripted. I do think there is a place for scripted programs as far as intervention goes because if you're considering testing a student for an IEP it is important to show that you tried research-based interventions with the student first.
http://www.fountasandpinnell.com/lli/

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A Video of Some Negative Teacher Opinions of Scripted Programs

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A Video of Some Negative Teacher Opinions of Scripted Programs

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUIQ_fzOcqw

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A short story from a teacher that went from having freedom in her lesson planning to using a scripted program. She has a very positive outlook to consider.
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/teaching-around-the-script

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Miami University Website About Scripted Curriculum

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Miami University Website About Scripted Curriculum

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Hey all! This is actually from Miami's website. I think it is a great summary of scripted curriculum and lists pros and cons of schools using it.  I notice that Journey's is listed on this page, which is what my district began using just this year.
http://performancepyramid.miamioh.edu/node/1368

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This interview is with Erika Christakis, who is a previous educator and director of the Yale Child Study Center. Erika answers questions about why play based education is important in Early Childhood Education, and why we should be encouraging play more and using scripted curriculum with young children less. She brings up many good points about the capability of young children and how we can honor that through play instead of through scripted academics.

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In her just-released book, "The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups" (Viking), noted early childhood educator and Silliman College associate master Erika Christakis argues that most of today's youngest schoolchildren are spending their critical early-learning years in environments that ignore or misunderstand their needs. A former preschool teacher and director who has taught at the Yale Child Study Center, she makes the case that "schooling and learning are often two different things." She argues that preschool children would be better served if educators get "out of their way" by allowing for more play-based - and less formally scripted - educational experiences, and by creating less cluttered and visually demanding environments in which these naturally curious youngsters can explore and "think out loud." Drawing on research and clinical experience, Christakis also offers advice on how best to help these young thinkers learn and grow in these potently formative years.

"'The Importance of Being Little' reflects Erika's deep and longstanding commitment to the education of young people," says Yale President and noted psychologist Peter Salovey. "Her book is sensitive and kind, and it reveals her aspiration that students of all ages will not only speak to one another but also listen. It is this same spirit that has animated her teaching, evincing faith in students' ability to grow through conversation and interaction."

Christakis shared some of her thoughts about preschool education with YaleNews before the publication of her book on Feb. 9. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
How has your own work as a preschool teacher and director informed your thoughts about how we can best serve young children?
The more I observe young children in action, the more faith I have that they are capable and powerful. But our expectations are often mismatched: We ask too much of young children pragmatically, but too little of them cognitively. Preschool classrooms are needlessly noisy, over-stimulating, and aesthetically unappealing environments with rapid pacing and jam-packed schedules. There is too much teacher-directed talk on banal topics and insufficient uninterrupted stretches of time to play. The teachers I admire have learned to loosen the reins. But there is nothing ad hoc about their pedagogy; it takes real skill, knowledge, and professional collegiality to create classroom environments where children see themselves as engineers, physicists, sculptors, storytellers, entomologists, philosophers, musicians, and diplomats. That kind of teaching is not easy.
In your book, you argue that pre-school has "adultified" children. How so?
The physical and emotional terrain in which to be a young child is more constrained than ever. We construct children's environments at home and school with adult eyes and adult desires. We expect preschoolers to conform to our time-tables, our habits, our sleep schedules, our electronics usage, our whims. But I believe there is a way to be more child-centered, and we can do this without making parents and other adults crazy.

When we look at childhood from the preschooler's perspective, we see many surprises: The small person who dawdles impossibly getting out the door every morning turns out to be the very same person who can hold a newborn baby sibling with the utmost concentration and tenderness. The child who has to be cajoled to cut a piece of red construction paper to make a parent's Valentine's Day card can make a meticulous sketch of the grains of beach sand she's observed under a microscope. So, perhaps the child's environment needs to be re-sized just a little to leverage more of these special moments and to avoid the challenging ones. Greater attention to what I call the early childhood "habitat" is ultimately quite freeing for both children and adults: We can better see their capacity and power.
You say that one the most important predictors of preschool effectiveness is the relationship between teacher and child. What makes for a beneficial relationship between the two?
Teachers need to know children well on two levels. They need to know the kinds of things to expect from a typical 3-year-old and also to know those 3-year-olds as individuals, each with unique strengths, challenges, and idiosyncrasies. In order to understand young children in this comprehensive way, teachers need to be versed in sound developmental principles and to have the time and opportunity to get to know children in their natural habitat, which is to say in a play-based, language-rich setting involving relationships with adults who cherish them.

In particular, teachers need to take the time to listen to children's stories, to laugh with them, to get down on the floor, at their eye level, and figure out what makes them tick. This kind of respectful observation of what children can (and can't) do is rare in early childhood settings, where instead too many children receive calibrated doses of highly scripted, one-size-fits-all instruction on boring themes like "food groups" or the making of an egg-carton caterpillar.
There is a concerted educational focus on closing the achievement gap. How do you think that has impacted the preschool experience, and has it worked?
Children in poverty face a double burden: They are at risk for family stresses that make it hard to provide responsive, language-rich environments at home, and they are then twice as likely to be in lower-quality preschool programs where play and conversation are in short supply.

Some experts estimate that our current preschool system only closes the achievement gap by around 5%, compared to the 30%-50% reduction we could produce if we adopted the widespread use of scientifically validated best practices. This is a lost public policy opportunity of epic proportions. Unfortunately, much of the attention on closing the ability gap has focused on shallow, one-dimensional learning outcomes, such as color and shape recognition, rather than more complex skills such as symbolic thinking or causal inference that come from exploratory, play-based learning. What we want to see is an early childhood pedagogy based on ideas. It's important to understand that simple skills, such as alphabet awareness, should be the byproduct of good learning, but they shouldn't be the end point itself.
Has too much stress been placed on accountability in our preschools?
All children are entitled to a year of demonstrable progress in preschool, but we've focused on the wrong kinds of accountability measures. We know that children will use higher-level language structures when they are playing grocery store than they will use when gathered around a table counting pictures of grocery carts. We know that children learn optimally when they have secure attachments and deep friendships. We need to re-focus our standards on preparing the classroom environment so that children can thrive: Do teachers understand principles of child development? Are they using a warm, responsive teaching style that elicits inquiry and problem-solving? Are they engaging multiple learning domains simultaneously or just teaching simple skills? These are questions good standards need to address. Many people wrongly assume that such standards can't be quantified, but they can. Walter Gilliam and Chin Reyes at the Yale Child Study Center are among the researchers at the frontier of creating accountability measures that reflect the cognitive and social-emotional aspirations we should have for young children.
How are preschool curricula affecting children's enthusiasm for learning?
Preschool teaching is still focused on a content-based curriculum rather than on transferable skills that kids can apply to a variety of dynamic settings. This is a problem because many preschoolers spend three or more years in institutional care before they even hit kindergarten. There's some evidence that children exposed to the same preschool tedium for multiple years - for example, the dreaded daily tracking of the calendar or unvarying class rules at Circle Time - may actually lose interest in school and fare worse on academic learning outcomes in the later years. We should encourage kids to find recyclable materials around the classroom to make a dinosaur from their imagination rather than taking a pre-fab craft project from the teacher's box labeled "Dinosaur Unit." We need to give them a cognitive sequence to follow in every new situation, whether it's playing in a pile of mud for the first time or holding an injured bird at the nature museum: "observe, question, explore, reflect."
You mention Finland as a country that gets pre-school education right. What's different there?
We have to be careful about comparisons, because our countries are so different, but Finland improved its performance by professionalizing its workforce with better pay and other investments. Importantly, Finnish teachers do not have specific performance expectations for young children, but they do have a strongly mission-driven pedagogy with well-articulated "orientations" - what they call "ways of knowing" that are unique to children - such as artistic expression and imaginative play. Within these orientations, the children engage in all the big domains we should care about, such as oral language and number sense and, of course, social skills. In fact, a great many Finnish kindergartners read quite well, even though they aren't required to start literacy instruction until age seven.

The Finnish approach reveres the physical and conceptual space in which to be a young child. They have giant room-sized clothes dryers for snow suits so the kids can be outdoors multiple times during the day. This approach reflects a rather un-American respect for early childhood as a life stage worthy in its own right and not merely as a training ground for an adult future.

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Preschoolers need more play and fewer scripted lessons, says early childhood educator Erika Christakis

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In her just-released book, "The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups" (Viking), noted early childhood educator and Silliman College associate master Erika Christakis argues that most of today's youngest schoolchildren are spending their critical early-learning years in environments that ignore or misunderstand their needs.

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This website provides scripted lesson plans for the purpose of providing a substitute teachers with a lesson to teach. The FAQ page answered the "Why are your lesson plans all scripted?" with an explanation of the minor requirements to substitute, and that providing a scripted lesson will "properly teach" the lesson.

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How do I determine how much content to download for a full day absence?

We offer segmented half day plans containing 2-4 segments each 30-90 minutes in length. We suggest picking a half day ELA plan and a half day math plan to fill a day of instruction for your substitute. Every school and teacher has a unique daily schedule, so you can decide how to tell your substitute to use the content.

Option A: Following your daily bell schedule have your substitute teach the math half day in the morning, working through one segment at a time until time runs out. Then begin the ELA half day in the afternoon. *Make note for your substitute to stop instruction for specials like gym, art, music etc, lunch, and recess.

Option B: Following your daily bell schedule have your substitute teach 1 ELA segment, then 1 Math segment, alternating this way until there is no time left in the day. *Make note for your substitute to stop instruction for specials like gym, art, music etc, lunch, and recess.

Option C: Following your daily bell schedule have your substitute teach selected segments of the ELA half day plan (or purchase 1-hour versions) or math half days during your designated ELA and math blocks and provide them with another activity/lesson of your own to meet any other subject areas like S.S., Health, Science, etc. *Make note for your substitute to stop instruction for specials like gym, art, music etc, lunch, and recess.

Using our Classroom Logistic Page is a great way to map out your daily schedule and indicate which lesson to be covered when!

How can I become a lesson writer for Daybreak lesson plans?

We are always looking for certified and experienced K-5 teachers with a strong foundation in ELA or Math. If you are interested in starting the process of becoming a lesson writer please email your interest to laura@daybreaklessonplans.com

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How do I determine how much content to download for a full day absence? We offer segmented half day plans containing 2-4 segments each 30-90 minutes in length. We suggest picking a half day ELA plan and a half day math plan to fill a day of instruction for your substitute.

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This article provides good information about the effectiveness of a scripted curriculum for reading and gives a short list of pros and cons. I think this article provides a food insight into the use of scripted curriculum for reading.

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Teacher of 25 years  reacts to the use of scripted curriculum in her classroom.

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Teacher of 25 years  reacts to the use of scripted curriculum in her classroom.

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It's interesting to hear about the implementation of scripted curriculum from a teacher who has taught for so long. She discusses how strictly her school demands she follow the curriculum and how it has changed the way that she teachers.

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A public school teacher in Delaware wrote the following moving piece but asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation. It explains what is happening to many teachers who are being given scripted lessons aligned to the Common Core State Standards by their principals and district superintendents. Note that this teacher is not opposed to standards. It's an important point, as critics of the Common Core's implementation in many school districts have been accused of being opposed to standards and wanting to keep the "status quo."

Here is the teacher's piece:

Teaching used to be a fun job that I was deeply passionate about. I used my own creativity mixed with a healthy dose of perseverance, dedication and cheerleading to encourage my students, most labeled "special needs," to believe in their own abilities and self worth. I believed in their greatness and I helped them to believe it, too. In my nearly 25 years of teaching children I have seen learning disabled, non-readers become college graduates; non-writers grow to be valedictorians; reluctant readers become bookworms. I've encouraged students to write, to risk, to think, and to try again all of my adult life. In fact, one performance evaluation stated that I was "a naturally gifted teacher with the unique ability to inspire greatness in my students."

I was taught in teacher's college that each student had an individual learning style, and that my job as a teacher was to discover each child's pathway to learning and help them to embark on that path. My calling was to meet the needs of the child.

Some years I witnessed the growth in the year I actually taught the student. Many times I simply planted the seed that another teacher watered and yet another reaped the harvest. Teaching, for me, has always been about the children. Their learning. Their growth. Their future.

I used to do many fun, innovative projects with my students. My students have owned and managed their own businesses, written children's books and read them to younger students, done year-long literature studies on specialized topics, hosted project fairs, and an array of other student-created, choice- driven projects. They have designed, researched, written and read beyond their peers. My high school students were required to read 25 novels per year...yes, even the ones with learning disabilities could meet this goal with the help of assistive technology. Meeting and exceeding standards has always been my goal.

Last year, however, my performance appraisal listed me as "satisfactory." What has changed? I'm still me. I still bring the passion, dedication, and years of experience to the classroom that I always have.

What has changed is Common Core State Standards. I was given a curriculum and told by my administration to teach it "word-for-word." In a meeting with my administration, I was reprimanded with "Don't forget, standards drive our instruction."

Standards drive instruction. Data determines effectiveness. Positive outcomes for students requires proof.

If I don't supply that proof, I'm not an effective teacher. Period. And my administration has warned me that my job depends on this proof.

I can't do projects with my students anymore because I have to teach the curriculum word-for word, and I am only allowed to use standards-based assessments (which I must create myself). It doesn't matter how my students learn best. It doesn't matter that the Common Core State Standards assume a steady progression of skills that my students have not been formerly taught. It doesn't matter that my students arrive at my door with a host of factors that I cannot control...their home situations, their former schooling, their attitudes toward school and learning and themselves, the neighborhood they live in, whether they are English Language Learners or have special needs, or whether they have just broken up with their girlfriend in the cafeteria. All those factors also affect student performance, but none of that matters. What matters is how my students perform on the state test. (And I must STOP teaching for 6 weeks in the spring to make sure our students pass that test.)

I'm not opposed to standards, it's the standards BASED part that I have issue with.

My students like to tell me that I'm old school. They are right. I'm from the school of teaching CHILDREN, not standards. I'm from the school of student needs, not student data. I'm from the school of thinking and discovery and choice; not canned, watered-down, one-size-fits-all, global curricula.

Like so many experienced, good teachers, I don't want to be a teacher anymore. But where do I go? I need to make a living, but who wants a "satisfactory" former teacher with no advanced degree? I've dedicated my life to teaching children, but with CCSS, teaching children is no longer the point.

Standards-BASED education gets it all wrong. They assume the best teaching and the best learning can be quantified with tests and data. Yet I've never once had a student compliment me on my academic knowledge or my data collection skills. I've never had a student thank me for writing insightful test questions or for staying up late to write a stunning lesson plan. But students HAVE thanked me for being there, for listening to them, for encouraging them, for believing in them even before they could believe in themselves. Meeting our student's academic needs begins with seeing them as human beings with worth and capability and gifting, not as research subjects.

Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul is full of stories of teachers who made a difference in student's lives through their care, their courage, and their dedication...not their student's test scores. Judging the effectiveness of a teacher on only quantifiable data reduces the art of teaching children to a mathematical algorithm can that be performed more effectively by a hologram projected on the Smart board than by an old-fashioned, caring, humanly flawed teacher.

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Teacher slams scripted Common Core lessons that must be taught 'word for word'

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A public school teacher in Delaware wrote the following moving piece but asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation. It explains what is happening to many teachers who are being given scripted lessons aligned to the Common Core State Standards by their principals and district superintendents.

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This is not my way of saying," Well why don't more black people teach??" I was sincerely curious about how black teachers feel about teaching.

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Current working conditions for teachers in schools are "extremely racialized," Griffin said, and schools "need to understand the nuances of these experiences to retain teachers."

Consider discipline. Many of the teachers said they felt more able than colleagues to manage their classrooms. As one teacher (the report does not include names so that teachers would feel comfortable sharing their experiences) said:

I didn't have to get loud or do anything. It was just, I had a no- nonsense kind of attitude, where it's a lot of nonverbal cues. 'I expect more from you.' You know, it was just, it's a different vibe than other teachers, where they kind of make excuses, and 'Oh, I can't handle you. I'm afraid of you. I want you to be my friend.' No. They're going to respect me.

Yet black teachers said that very ability to manage a classroom meant they were then viewed primarily as disciplinarians and not as educators-as the report notes, "a reductive stereotype that we heard throughout the focus groups. These teachers were assumed to be tough and strict instead of being able to connect to their students and use that connection to establish order and create a classroom environment conducive to learning."

In other words, the strengths that many black teachers possess and would like to use to benefit children of all backgrounds are the very traits used to limit their professional growth. (The report doesn't say so directly, but that pigeonholing seems to have as much to do with white teachers feeling unprepared or unwilling to handle certain scenarios as it does with believing black teachers are capable of only certain tasks.)

It's also worth noting a fact that black teachers indicate is widely overlooked by schools: Just because a teacher is black does not mean that he or she is going to relate to every black student's experience. No one would assume that a white teacher relates to every white student, but the absurdity doesn't necessarily register with school officials who may be blinded by stereotypes. As one teacher said, "We become the representative for every child of color, I mean, whether we relate to them, whether our culture is the same or not. We become the representative for all of those children."

That's exhausting, particularly when black teachers feel that their colleagues are unwilling to recognize their ability to also be subject-matter experts with valuable ideas about pedagogy and curriculum. One teacher said:

I've put in a lot of work, and there are a lot of things that I've implemented and have shared with other people and other teachers, and then they get the credit. And I told one of my co-workers - it's been recently, and she is a white coworker, and she recognized it, too - and I told her, 'It's starting to piss me off, because I'm putting in this work, and someone else is getting recognized for something that they really didn't do, or someone else is looking to be more qualified with less years and less time in the position.'

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Many African American educators say they don't feel respected or empowered at their schools.

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NEA> Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools...

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NEA> Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools...

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This letter flows in line with Matias. It is short and to the point. I like that it includes numerous remarks from readers at the end

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Dr. Christopher Emdin is a passionate and unapologetic advocate for the advancement of urban education nationwide. In his book,For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too, Emdin, an associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, conveys his methods of "reality pedagogy" and challenges the biased perception of inner city youth being "unreachable." W hite educators are not in the classroom to "save" students, he writes, but should focus instead on integrating the cultures and views of the students into the learning experience. As the teacher's perception of the students changes, Emdin believes, so will the students' attitudes towards the value of education. Emdin, a former high school teacher, recently spoke with NEAToday.
What are trends in education over the last few years or so that prompted you to write the book?
Chris Emdin: I think the biggest trend in contemporary education that I found problematic, is that it's layered. There is a high number of educators teaching in schools highly populated with students of color that don't reflect the community. If you go in schools right now, almost all black schools have a 90% white staff. And of course you hear or see that and go "well, that's interesting," but most of these staff don't live in the community, they don't understand the community, they don't know the socio-economic background of the community, and have a perception about those students based upon were they come from.

There are teachers who are not being trained appropriately. Not to speak negatively about education schools, but there are people coming out of school with a Masters or Bachelor's in education, taking one class in multiculturalism, or one class on ethnicity, race and politics. Then these teachers go into spaces where race, politics, ethnicity and class are the biggest factors they have to face. There's also the idea of the hyper-scripted curriculum that the teachers don't have the space to ask the students about who they are.
What has been the reaction of white educators to the title of the book?
CE: I've gotten everything from "Oh wow, thanks for telling the truth!" to "This man is racist." I've gotten to the point in time, my life and my mission where I'm not going to allow political correctness to inhibit me from saying what needs to be said. If you're not ready to talk about that fact that you are white in a black and brown school, then you shouldn't be ready to teach in that school.

I'm not demonizing white folks or speaking to just white folks, I'm speaking to the rest of y'all too! There are black folks who also enforce those same white supremacist ideologies. The tools are for everyone, the tools are for the fact that we have 80% of white people in urban schools, but it's also for you black and brown educators who are conditioned to accept the pedagogies that white folks are implementing. It ain't about being racist, it's about being aware of race.
You say many white teachers come into the classroom believing that children of color need to be "saved." What does that mean exactly, and why is this approach counterproductive?
CE: The vision that kids need to be saved equates to thinking something's wrong with them. There's no teacher who should go into a space thinking that the students are inherently bad. If you are walking into a classroom and see students as victims, you are seeing them as having an inherent flaw that only you can fix. You [the teacher] are there to help them learn and allow them to do fixing for themselves.

The savior complex is also problematic because it reinforces the notion that the teacher is the hero. To be a good teacher the effective skill you need is not ego. It's humility. You look at the natural, raw, unpolished beauty of the neighborhood, and if you are looking to save someone, you cannot see that.
How can a teacher successfully bring to a classroom the pedagogy of co-teaching along with the class, or, as you call it, "the structure of a hip-hop cipher"?
CE: The beginning step is to understand that you are a partner in the process. When we talk about education, we are talking about teaching and learning at equal value. To be able to maximize the opportunity for people to be able to learn, it requires maximizing the opportunity for them to teach. The best teachers are also the best learners. Now, the teacher maybe an expert in content, but the students are the experts in their cultures. The best teachers learn that in order for them to be able to effectively deliver content, they must be willing to learn about the students.

The traditional model is very unitary: "I teach, you learn." But if I create the space where we teach and learn from each other, then we open up new spaces for us all. It's not just for the students, it's for the teachers as well, who then become better people when they learn. The problem is that the classroom experience is so scripted, that teachers don't find the time to get to know their students.
How do we call attention to those subtly racist or stereotypical remarks (also known as micro aggressions) that are often made to minority students? For example, a white teacher talking slang to black students.

If you are walking into a classroom and see students as victims, you are seeing them as having an inherent flaw that only you can fix. You [the teacher] are there to help them learn and allow them to do fixing for themselves."

CE: The only way that we're going to address those kinds of biases is to give the students the agency and the power to be able to call out what makes them feel uncomfortable. As a part of my pedagogy, I may create a group of maybe four kids or so where we discuss the class outside of class. Now, that may not happen in a classroom of 32 or 25, but if it's a conflicting conversation between the teacher for three weeks in a row, the student should be able to come to them and express their concerns.
Teaching for social justice is so important, but many teachers, perhaps newer to the classroom, may not necessarily know what that means or have various definitions. What does teaching for social justice mean to you and do you see it gaining a foothold in classrooms?
CE: I feel like the work to advance social justice has become more visible. I hold talks, I get phone calls, and hundred of educators speak out on twitter speaking of social justice.

Social justice is the recognition of the fact that the system that we are living in, is actually complicit to the oppression of our people. For me, social justice is about awareness, and it's about solution. How do you make people aware about patriarchy? Bias? The inequities that exist? Discrimination in communities? How do you make people aware that good, well-intentioned people are a part of the machine that is fulfilling violence against people of color? And then, after identifying the problem, what is the solution? Educators must think of how they will teach differently, about how they will change the curriculum to address these conditions.
What's the one best piece of advice you offer new educators in a school with predominantly marginalized students of color?
CE: "You are there not as a savior, but as a revolutionary." They must know that this work is also a civil rights issue. Teaching is not "just a job." There's "jobs" on Wall Street, jobs in policy, but in the classroom, education is a responsibility. You have lives in your hands, and it's a very powerful, serious and spiritual thing.

I just want new educators to understand just how deeply honored they should be to be able to do this work. Once they understand the severity of the work and what they've been charged to do, it will be a wonderful place. They must make sure they are going in for the right reasons first.

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Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools: Drop the 'Savior Complex' and Learn from Students | NEA

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Dr. Christopher Emdin is a passionate and unapologetic advocate for the advancement of urban education nationwide. In his book,For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too, Emdin, an associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, conveys his methods of "reality pedagogy" and challenges the biased perception of inner city youth being "unreachable."

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After I read the article on scripted curriculum I revisited the Core Curriculum web page.  It does state, "Common Core are NOT a curriculum...C.C. is WHAT students need to know...curriculum is HOW students will learn it.  Even so, I do recognize and agree with the issues presented in this article.

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Disclaimer: On this page you can find the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts. The standards are temporarily located on this page while we work to address technical challenges with CoreStandards.org. Thank you for your patience and we will share an update on CoreStandards.org when we have one.
English Language Arts Standards English Language Arts Standards (ADA Compliant) Mathematics Standards Mathematics Standards (ADA Compliant)

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Disclaimer: On this page you can find the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts. The standards are temporarily located on this page while we work to address technical challenges with CoreStandards.org. Thank you for your patience and we will share an update on CoreStandards.org when we have one.