Thursday, October 31, 2013

An Interesting Common Core Exchange

From Fordham

54min50sec

Question: Garrett Fryer American Youth Policy Forum

Was there ever a discussion, when you all were designing it, to implement it on a kindergarten level and letting it grow with the students as they aged on through each grade, as oppossed to implementing it with the entire school system nation wide?

Answer: Jason Zimba

This is something that states have each approached differently.  Some states have done something more like that, some states have done something less like that.  I seem to remember at one point I saw a MA plan where the grade level wasn’t the key parameter, but they had a Venn diagram, what we do now the Common Core doesn’t do, what the Common Core does that we don’t, and then what sort of overlap, where we want to do it better. In year one, we’re gonna focus on the overlap and do it better. In year two, we’ll drop things… and then in year three, we’ll add…  I got the details of that wrong, but…  my only point is that different states all approached it differently, and we may find out that some states were much wiser than others in this way.

Singapore has a long standing, high functioning system in which they not only revise their syllabus ever so often, but they do it actually on the basis of how kids do, so think about that, a performance-based loop, a feedback loop. Which is something we are taking halting steps toward, but can only image.  And so roughly every six years or so, they’ll put out tweaks to the thing.  This year I noticed that they’ve rolled out a new thing in kindergarten.
 

I wonder... How in the world can one "image" OR take "halting steps toward" creating a "high functioning system" based on a "performance-based feedback loop" when we are STARTING with a top-down DESIGN by the name of Common Core?


 

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