Point of View

Common sense, not Common Core

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The article in the Oct. 3, edition of The Press entitled “Special ed teachers find new curriculum a challenge,” throws a welcome light on a profoundly troubling aspect of the Common Core curriculum: Its oafish insistence that the educational needs and characteristics of all children are essentially identical.

District 75 is devoted specifically to the education of students with severe and profound disabilities. Still, Deputy Superintendent Barbara Joseph appears to defend the extension of Common Core to classrooms throughout the district. 

Dismissing the concerns of classroom teachers that Common Core is a poor match for children with severe disabilities, Ms. Joseph says, “You have to be able to do backward designing. You have to be able to unpack that standard. You have to meet the student at their functional level.” 

I must admit I do not understand what Ms. Joseph means by the first two sentences, but I know all about meeting the student at their functional level and the application of the Common Core to District 75 is not the way to do it. 

Consider a 17-year-old male with Down syndrome and a measured IQ in the 40s. He can count to 20 by rote and though he can identify the numbers on a clock, he cannot tell time. He is unable to count money, but he can identify the value of coins.  He cannot calculate the change from a small purchase,  yet he can round off prices to the nearest whole dollar amount. 

Challenges abound, but there is raw material with which to work. 

Public education has traditionally focused on addressing functional deficits of special needs students in an effort to maximize their potential for independence before graduation.

Today, special education teachers sit through hours of excruciating Common Core staff training, professional development and so-called cohort meetings focused on topics such as equations and inequalities, polynomials, rewriting rational expressions and reasoning with equations and inequalities. 

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