I've had the chance to teaching in two different state since graduating from college with my undergrad, and they couldn't be more different from each other. I've also had the opportunity to watch as education has gone through a huge overhaul in terms of testing and curriculum in the 14 years since I started attending high school and now. I experienced Ohio Proficiency Testing when I was in high school but was also in the "guinea pig" testing group to see how the implementation of the Ohio Graduation Test would go; I helped administer the OGT's during my method's block. I was educated in college about how to teach to the Ohio benchmarks and standards, but within a year of graduating they had already voted to implement new core curriculum standards, and in the first five years of my teaching career I have taught under both systems. In Ohio, I experienced what the core curriculum would look like before it was actually required; in New York, I've been teaching with the NY CCC, which is their very strict interpretation of what the CCC should look like.
Changes. So many changes. And where is this all leading us?
I can't say for certain; I'm still too new to my teaching career and learning how all of this works, so even if I had an opinion, I don't feel like I have enough experience to really back it up. What I do know is what I'm experiencing with the New York CCC this year - and it's not pretty.
Granted, my opinion of the CCC is based from the New York implementation. I have so little experience with the Ohio CCC, and what experience I have was a few years ago, so I can't even say how accurate it is today. Just a warning, I don't have many nice things to say about NY's. Also, this is a topic I could go on about for a very long time, but I'm going to try to keep this somewhat short.
In NY, the CCC has been structured into a very strict teaching formula. I'm in a first grade classroom, and we have a script of what we say when we teach, the exact supplements we use, the exact assignments we give, the exact assessments we administer. We're on a set teaching schedule to follow this curriculum, and there is very little room to adjust and account for creativity, reteaching, or even differentiation.
I'll let that sink in for a moment: there is basically no room to differentiate the curriculum (outside of what is required for IEP's and 504's) for students who are not on-target.
So how in the world are we supposed to reach out to these kids who come in below what the NY department of ed has determined to be necessary prior knowledge to understand the content in the CCC? From what I can tell, it's an issue that most teachers are finding to be a bigger and bigger problem as the first year of required CCC moves forward and more students are falling behind. Many teachers are beginning to use their planning period or after school time to help work with students who need the differentiation, since there is little room to do that during the class period and the structured curriculum. Teachers are rushing the CCC Monday through Thursday in order to have a little extra class time on Friday to try to catch everyone up who fell behind during the first part of the week. What are teachers being forced to go to these more extreme measures just to be able to reach the majority of their students when this is the whole reason the CCC was implemented in NY in the first place? NY prides itself on having some of the highest educational standards in the country, yet their choice to ignore the fact that the majority of the students in the state may not have the prior knowledge to meet the rigorous pace of the CCC and be able to meet those standards shows what little consideration for actual student ability and knowledge is being used.
I'm watching as first graders cry during testing because the expectations of what they learned in kindergarten last year (pre-CCC) don't meet what NY CCC has kindergarteners learning this year (under CCC) and therefore they don't know what's on the test. I'm trying to figure out what to do when my lessons require kids to count backwards from 20 by twos and I still have kids who struggle counting forwards to ten by ones. And I'm seeing kids who had an excitement for learning when the year started just a few short months ago become frustrated and let that excitement begin to diminish because the pace of the CCC is just too fast for them to keep up with. And there's very little I'm able to do about it.
As a compassionate person, it breaks my heart for these kids. As an educator, it makes me sad that we are so quick to implement these high standards and a CCC that meets them (in NY, the math CCC still is not complete, and teachers get only a couple months of CCC at a time) that the implications and prethought about this system are being brushed to the side. And the children are suffering.
Do I have a solution? No.
I only have a few years of teaching experience, a passion to see kids truly engage in learning and succeed, and the interaction with a core curriculum structure that is failing the kids it claims it's trying to help.
