Common Core

Does anyone remember Cornell Notes? I never learned the technique myself, but I had a highschool teacher who showed it to us in outline, advocating that we would do much better in college if we used it.  Maybe so.

They tried new math on Barbara Letendre, Judy Klein, and me in 6th grade, taught by the principal. 1965. I don't know if it helped any.  I learned math by just playing with numbers all the time, because I liked them.  Arduous trial-and-error calculation (√13=3.60555...), mental math, loved it all. Plus the answers for new math were in the right-hand column, covered by a folded piece of oak tag, so I always cheated.  Couldn't stop. Another brilliant new idea by textbook designers, eh?  What could go wrong?

There was SRA, and then everyone thought that Open Classrooms would fix everything. Then it was learning centers. The five-paragraph essay, reformed mathematics (I always wondered if utter depravity was in that somewhere), self-esteem, phonics, Values Clarification, writing process...they were going to bring us to the promised land. 

The list keeps growing, but many things fall away.  Multiple intelligences are big now, learning styles inventory not so much.  Sustained Silent Reading and Drop Everything And Read, Cultural Literacy, Bloom's Taxonomy, Brain-based learning, Authentic Assessment. Block scheduling remains fashionable, but Writing Across the Curriculum may have faded. Add more in the comments as they occur to you.

A decade ago No Child Left Behind became a required fad. That's not good. 

Please notice that all these things had some good in them.  It's better to have a plan than to have no plan. There are a lot of good frameworks for learning there.  They just don't change things, for good or for ill, anywhere near as much as their advocates and critics predicted. Educational fads never do half the good nor half the damage claimed.

It pays to remember this about Common Core. It is neither the Great Leap Forward nor the pact with the devil it is being made out to be.  It has some good aspects about emphasising clarity and trying to keep some semblance of a national culture in education. That's all fine.  

One of the main objections that conservatives have is that the feds are using a pretty heavy hand in making this happen.  That is indeed, a good thing to oppose on general principal.  Even good ideas should be viewed with suspicion if the government is trying to make you adopt them. This required aspect seems to be taking up most of conservative's energy. They keep insisting that no, no, it's the program itself that they don't like, but the evidence is against that.  It's not what sets their blood boiling and fingers linking. It's the conscription they don't like.  

That is an attitude I generally approve of. Secondly, opposing any new idea as it comes down the pike in education may sound closed-minded and reactionary, but given the extreme tendency of that field to fall for fads, reflexive opposition isn't a bad strategy at all. Teachers get that way after a few years on the job themselves: Oh goodness, what is it now? Just go away and let me teach, and stop coming up with new magic potions. My wife once went to a workshop about a new method where the presenter was explicit that she wanted her hearers to have a conversion experience similar to a religious one. These chowderheads really do think that way, and they should get some pushback.

But it's just not this malign, destructive force about to swallow our children.  It doesn't rise to that level.

Here's the test: If, when I say "It's not that important," what you hear is "He thinks my child's education is not that important," then I think you are overreacting.  And I say this as one who overreacted to educational things myself when my children were younger. What the school does to or for your child is not as big as all that.  When you get a teacher or a program that works for your child, ride that wave as far as it can go.  When you get some fool of an instructor, or a school that insists on driving a bad idea into the center of the earth no matter how often if fails, you have to correct for that. You, the parent, are the more important variable here.

And beyond that, your child's thinking, habits, abilities, and hard-wired character are more important still.
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Looking for more I found rubrics, small schools, multiculturalism, inventive spelling, back to basics, metacognition, standards-based instruction...