Define Your Gold Standard

For a few years now, social media has been inundated with parents (and some teachers) flooding timelines and newsfeeds with viral images of edgy responses to apparently ridiculous strategies that are being taught under the umbrella of Common Core. I am no Common Core apologists and I still have some issues with agendas that have come out under the Common Core banner, but I think it is time to step back and reevaluate the scene. 

I'm not going to address the troubling cultural implications of parents (in the "everyone deserves a trophy" generation) who would stoop so low as to encourage their child to blatantly disrespect a teacher by drafting and publishing such vial responses -- you know, the ones where they attack a teacher for attempting to teach modern, research-based solution strategies that were not developed, nor necessarily endorsed by that teacher. I'm not going to address the fact that US students have sharply declined in math and science globally in the last three decades while these parents were learning old techniques. I'm also not going to address the fact that Common Core is not a curriculum and does not promote any particular strategy -- rather, in math, it does suggest that students should develop problem solving skills based on a deep understanding (like adults have to do in the real world) instead of merely accepting and regurgitating facts and rules. I'm not going to address those issues, so you don't have to get mad.