I listened to Tim Shanahan discuss the Common Core State Standards implementation and he said that he is “frightened” by the task at hand.
(Wow!) The main concern? The CCSS are such a leap for us from our current practice that there is significant worry that our current benchmark kids will not meet the CCSS benchmark level.
The other big deal here? It doesn’t matter what we “think” should be taught (because we’ve always taught things this way or that way), because the college professors and the job embedded workforce has spoken: the current levels that students come to the colleges or to the work force just isn’t going to cut it in the future – we have to develop students beyond where we’ve developed them today.
So this standards movement is for ALL kids and it’s not just going to be minor tweaking to our current practice. Exciting for us to work in this way, but also a bit daunting to me!