Education's common core

This morning the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers released their draft K-12 Common Core State Standards for comment. The standards are the latest attempt to set some form of national standards, in this case in English-language arts and mathematics. According to the groups announcement:

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards are:

• Aligned with college and work expectations;
• Clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Evidence-based.

These common standards seem to me to be a step forward in boosting effective investments in one of our most important intangible assets: education. I have somewhat wary of the standardized test approach to education. It seem that approach is more suited to the old industrial era than the current information age. People have different learning styles and different forms of "intelligence" that can be hard to capture in standardized test. However, a common core of expectations of the foundational skills that children should have seems to me to be an important starting point.

For example, I support efforts to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education -- not because I think we should try to make everyone into a techie (that would be a disaster on so many levels). I support STEM because math and science are foundational skills needed for many activities -- including critical thinking and deductive reasoning.

In my quick look at the materials, I did find one slightly amusing note. The reading standards for kindergartners includes the following:

1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

a. Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.
b. Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
c. Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
d. Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

I wonder in a future electronic print world if the ability to recognize the front cover of a book will be a foundational skill.

The draft standards are out for comment until April 2.