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Common Core: Totally unready, full speed ahead

I don’t totally hate Common Core — yet. But I sure do hate the way it has been jammed into Nevada classrooms.

The Common Core standards are a huge concern for conservatives around the country, who view the academic guidelines put in place by Nevada and more than 40 other states as a massive federal intrusion on local control of schools. It has become an important issue in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich taking shots for supporting the imposition of the standards in their respective states.

There’s a lot of important context in this debate. Common Core is a set of standards subject to state and local control, not a federal curriculum. States and school districts, not the U.S. Department of Education, are guiding the transition to higher standards intended to better prepare students for college and the workforce.

But there’s a reason that context gets lost. Schools are implementing fundamental changes in the way they teach students when they’re clearly not prepared to do so. Teachers are frustrated, students are frustrated, and parents are infuriated because, especially in math, they find themselves unable to help with basic homework and scrambling to the Internet to learn how certain skills might be taught.

If you don’t have kids in school, just Google “Common Core math” and watch some of the videos that deal with everything from basic addition and subtraction to fractions. The driving force behind these changes is the goal of improved “math literacy” by moving away from memorization of basic facts as the foundation for advanced math concepts and toward problem-solving skills.

One way the new standards seek to accomplish this is through deconstruction of even single-digit problems. Instead of teaching students that 8+7=15, students are taught how to convert the problem to 10+5, an easier version of the same question.

This is the early grade stuff. For a lot of the fourth- and fifth-graders who learned their basic math the “old” way and now are being taught the new approach, it’s brutal. The standards actually push back the introduction of some concepts, from division to algebra. That means delayed mastery of skills, if they’re mastered at all, for hoped-for gains in critical thinking.

Why so hard? One big reason: There are no textbooks.

The Clark County School District has been holding parent meetings at schools to sell Common Core and answer parent questions about the changes. During one of the meetings last week at my kids’ school, district officials acknowledged current shortcomings:

— Parents were told the system is struggling to ensure that educators are being taught the same, correct strategies in teaching Common Core concepts. Translation: Teachers are learning as they go even as they bear the responsibility of improving your child’s growth, and there isn’t a guarantee of consistency from classroom to classroom and school to school. Teachers are hitting the Internet for answers, just like parents.

— Parents were told that although the system is moving full speed ahead with the standards, secondary schools won’t get their first Common Core textbooks until next school year. The process of selecting textbooks for elementary schools is about to get underway, and kids in K-5 classrooms will get textbooks in time for the 2017-18 school year.

Two years from now.

So we’re moving ahead with new national standards even though all teachers aren’t adequately trained and textbooks aren’t available. Throw in the state’s spring testing boondoggle, during which computers crashed so badly Common Core assessments couldn’t be completed, and it’s perfectly understandable why so many parents assume this is a federal initiative. This has Washington screwup written all over it.

I do see some Common Core concepts clicking in my son’s head. It could yet serve him well. But was it really asking too much for schools to be ready for Common Core before diving into it?

If it doesn’t work, and if entire classes of kids suffer because of it, Common Core will go down as education’s Obamacare.

— Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s senior editorial writer. Follow him on Twitter: @Glenn_CookNV. Listen to him Mondays at 10 a.m. on “Live and Local — Now!” with Kevin Wall on KBET 790 AM.

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