Allison Ericson, Valdosta Today News Director:
VALDOSTA — On Tuesday, Oct. 14th Amy Carter, Georgia State Representative and Lowndes High School teacher, spoke to the South Georgia Young Republicans party about Common Core. Common Core is one of the heaviest debated topics among the Ga. education system. Carter addressed the issues of Common Core and the misconceptions students, parents, and teachers have about it.
“One of the biggest misconceptions is, what is the difference between standards and curriculum? Standards are a set of goals to what the students should know and be able to do by the time that they complete a grade level,” Carter said. “Curriculum guides how a teacher teaches the standards.”
Carter explained the way her class standards work. The students have a set of standards related to specific classes. For example, in Carter’s Introduction to Education class her students have 11 standards, two of these are; students will analyze career pathways in the field of education and students will understand the historical perspective of U.S. public education.
“Curriculum is this book in my hand; this is the Introduction to Education that they use at Valdosta State University. I use it in my class room because my students are going to receive a college credit when they complete my pathway, this is my curriculum, this is what the school system tells me to use for teaching my class,” Carter said.
Another example Carter used is when a student is given a book for a specific class, that book is not a standard. It is that student’s school system’s curriculum that decided to use that book to teach with.
“When I hear that a student does not understand Common Core, well it is not necessarily that they don’t understand Common Core, because those are those standards. They don’t understand the curriculum that they’re being taught. What we are using to teach it to them is what they don’t understand,” Carter said.
Common Core was implemented in 2010 in order for students to move from state to state and remain at the same learning level as other students. In the same year, the Board of Education adopted standards in two subjects, English language arts and mathematics.
Sharon Galloway, Director of PreK-5 Curriculum for Lowndes County Schools said, “These are called Common Core Georgia Performance Standards because they’re not just pure Common Core standards. Georgia opted to add certain standards that were important to Georgia.”
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test results, in 2013 only 34 percent of Ga. students at the 4th grade level either met or were above national requirements. The Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) results, in 2013 reported that 93 percent of Ga. students at the 4th grade level met or exceeded Ga. requirements. Students are tested in the two subjects mentioned above, English language arts and mathematics for grades four, six, and eight.
“I will tell you first of all the math is different…it does build. If you have a child in a higher grade the assumption is by the time they hit 4th grade I should not have to teach them whole number operations,” Galloway said. “Much like we don’t teach letters of the alphabet in every grade level, in elementary school there comes a point where every child should know that, and math works very much like that.”
One of the biggest communication problems between parents and teachers is caused by how the teacher teaches a subject and how the parent learned that subject. Lowndes County Schools adopted a form of math called Eureka Math which examines mathematical concepts, and teaches students through hands on and visual lessons.
“What we have asked our teachers to do is very different; if you’re sending homework home make sure you’re sending examples home. You’re not the first parent to say, ‘I can’t help my child with this math,’ actually you probably can, it is just that you’re already past that point of having to break it down. You mentally do that and don’t even think about it…those mnemonic skills are embedded in us, whereas with a little one they might be breaking it down, you don’t just stop and think,” Galloway said.
“Why do we care what we look like to other states? Does it matter if Ga. is performing at a higher level or a lower level than other states? I hope so, because to me it means economic development and industry coming to this state. When we end up having good educated work force, industry comes to hire them,” Carter said.
