This report from the Center for American Progress sets out to demonstrate that research about how students learn, as well as “best practices” for teaching, are embedded directly into the Common Core State Standards. An interesting conceit, but the supporting evidence is mixed. The report rightly draws attention to Common Core’s call for a strong knowledge base across subject areas—a singular feature of the English language arts standards, and one that is too often overlooked. In emphasizing the need for a coherent, sequential curriculum, Common Core functionally reasserts E.D. Hirsch’s insight that reading comprehension is less a “skill” than a reflection of the reader’s background knowledge, which also drives critical thinking, problem solving, and a host of cognitive abilities devoutly wished for by teachers. “Prior knowledge is a critical and often determining factor in how well a student learns new concepts,” Marchitello and Wilhelm note. “In fact, some researchers believe that prior knowledge exceeds aptitude in determining learning—that what students know is more important than their raw intelligence.” Just so. The report could have done the field a solid had the authors stopped right there. The point can never be made often or strongly enough that a well-rounded education in history, science, art, and music—not ill-defined fads like “twenty-first century skills”—is the only known route to the big-picture goals of K–12 education. Alas, the authors overreach, conflating standards and pedagogy to stump for project-based learning and collaborative group work. The cognitive research on these teaching techniques is far from settled. Still, the report’s message is an important one: The crafters of Common Core were guided by research when drafting the standards—surely a better idea than just engaging in ideological warfare.
SOURCE: Max Marchitello and Megan Wilhelm, “The Cognitive Science Behind the Common Core,” Center for American Progress (September 2014).
