Common Core part 7

National standards are nothing new; they have been in place at least since the 1950s. However, what the Common Core standards are doing to curriculum can best be explained by Nancy Carlsson-Paige of New York in an email to Susan Ohanion:

“What is so fundamentally wrong with this Engage New York approach . . . is the focus on content and having facts and correct answers, a focus that requires a fact-based, didactic pedagogy for success. One where kids passively sit while teachers direct-teach content that is irrelevant to them and disconnected from the ways that they learn.”

You see, in New Yor...