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Catholic Education in America: Accountable to the Church or the Feds?

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This is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initative and its potential impact on Catholic education.

Catholic schools in America have flourished in large part because of their relative independence from outside influences. But the recent adoption by many Catholic schools of the Common Core standards and tests threatens their ability to fulfill their mission and be faithful to a Catholic vision of education.

The Common Core is a bureaucratic effort to further centralize control over education in America.  Seduced by federal incentives, 45 states agreed to adopt the Common Core in 2009. As schools implement the standards one thing grows clear: the Common Core weakens their ability to direct what they teach the children in their care.  This is particularly problematic for Catholic education.

Heather Crossin’s third-grade daughter goes to a Catholic school in Indiana.  Heather says that when her daughter came home from school with a text book aligned with Common Core, she realized control over what her child was taught had not only left the school building—it had left the state.

In the 45 states that have signed on to the Common Core, parents who send their children to public schools will soon see this scenario play out.  But it is increasingly a reality in private and Catholic education too.

Many dioceses and archdioceses have decided to implement or “adopt” the Common Core national standards.  Last May, the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) issued a statement offering its full support of the standards, arguing that implementation would not hinder the teaching of the Catholic Church.

However, Common Core standards are problematic for all of America’s schools—private and public.  Since the majority of Catholic children are educated in our nation’s public schools, Catholic parents should be concerned about whether their local school district, their local principal and their children’s primary teachers have ceded authority to bureaucratic “experts” in Washington, D.C.

A true “common core” teaching of Catholic social thought is the principle of subsidiarity, which counsels that decisions be made at the most effective local level.  The principle of subsidiarity empowers parents, in consultation with local teachers, schools and churches, to decide which sort of education is best for their children.  The Common Core national standards say the opposite: that educational decision-making is best made at the national level.

Common Core aims to impose one set of standards defining what every public school student in America will learn.  As a result of textbook spillover, state regulations and concerns about college-test preparations, many private and parochial schools will be subject to Common Core as well.

They shouldn’t.

The mission of Catholic education is to cultivate the moral and intellectual development of all students, forming their hearts and minds by orienting them to their identity in Christ and His Church while providing an excellent academic education.  Catholic education, by its very nature, requires that local parishes and parents be in charge of the educational decision- making that prepares students for this life, and the life after.

But Common Core is oriented toward different ends.

Since Washington got involved in education with the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the federal government has spent over $2 trillion on K-12 education, tying the hands of local school leaders with red tape and further burdening education with the bureaucracy of an ever-growing administrative state.

Educational achievement has flat-lined despite a near tripling of inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending by the federal government.  High school seniors are no better off today than the seniors of the 1970s.  Graduation rates for disadvantaged students have remained stagnant. The United States continues to fall behind international competitors.

The federal government’s solution?  Spend more money and usurp more authority from states and parents over what children are being taught.  The Common Core is an extension of this misguided logic—and it is covered with federal fingerprints.

Developed in 2009 by private interest groups in Washington, Common Core was immediately incentivized by the federal government.  The Obama administration offered $4.35 billion through Race to the Top, a competitive grant program.  Perhaps even more enticing, the administration circumvented Congress by offering waivers to states—and now local school districts—from the No Child Left Behind law if they adopted Common Core.

Nearly every state that received a waiver used Common Core to meet the federal requirement to adopt “college and career-ready” standards.  The government also directly financed the two national testing consortia—the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment—tasked with designing Common Core-aligned assessments.  Finally, the U.S. Department of Education created a bureaucratically titled “Technical Review Panel” to oversee assessment items.

Not only is Common Core costly in terms of educational liberty, it will also financially strap states and schools.

A study released by the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy estimates that the cost to states of implementing Common Core will reach $16 billion over the next seven years.  Nearly half of the states that have agreed to adopt Common Core already are seeing their testing costs double under the Washington-approved standards.

Despite evident threats imposed by Common Core, states, schools, and districts press on with implementation.  But concerns are growing louder and harder to ignore.

In October, 132 Catholic professors signed a letter sent to each Catholic bishop in the United States, outlining the threat Common Core poses to Catholic education.

The professors’ plea:

We write to you because of what the particular deficiencies of Common Core reveal about the philosophy and the basic aims of the reform. We write to you because we think that this philosophy and these aims will undermine Catholic education and dramatically diminish our children’s horizons. Promoters of the Common Core say that it is designed to make America’s children ‘college and career ready.’ We instead judge Common Core to be a recipe for standardized workforce preparation. Common Core shortchanges the central goals of all sound education and surely those of Catholic education: to grow in the virtues necessary to know, love, and serve the Lord, to mature into a responsible democratic self-government. Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education.

The deficiencies in Common Core noted by the professors stem from analyses by James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics at Stanford, and Sandra Stotsky, professor of education reform emerita at University of Arkansas, both of whom sat on Common Core’s review committee.  They dismissed themselves before the release of the standards because of their concerns with the content.

Dr. Milgram says the mathematics standards will put American students two grades behind international peers by the time they reach seventh grade.  Common Core’s sequencing pushes Algebra I off until ninth grade, when most states had been moving toward Algebra I in eighth grade.  The delay makes students less ready for most four-year universities.

Dr. Stotsky has similar concerns with the content of the English standards.  The diminished emphasis on literature, she says, “makes it unlikely that American students will study a meaningful range of culturally and historically significant literary works before graduation.” She also argues that emphasizing informational text over literature “may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking.”

Catholic schools should not turn over control of curriculum to anonymous boards of experts. Catholic education should recognize the potential in all students and the value of liberal learning regardless of career choices.

Some may argue that because the SAT and ACT college entrance exams have been aligned to the national standards, Catholic schools must adopt them so that their students do well on those exams.  This is unlikely to be so.

By and large, Catholic school students outperform public school students by a significant margin.  According to the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 49 percent of Catholic school eighth-graders are proficient in reading compared to 31 percent of public school students.  Also, 33 percent of Catholic school eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics compared to 26 percent of their peers in public school.

If Common Core pushes back Algebra I by two grade levels for most public schools, what effect will it have on math achievement in Catholic schools?

If Catholic school students significantly outperform public-school counterparts in English because Catholic curricula emphasize literature, what will happen when Catholic schools implement Common Core with its emphasis on informational text such as EPA manuals and executive orders?

The letter from Catholic professors expands on this point:

The history of Catholic education is rich in tradition and excellence.  It embraces the academic inheritance of St. Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Blessed John Henry Newman.  In contrast to such academic rigor, the Common Core standards lack an empirical evidentiary basis and have not been field-tested anywhere.

What great works will Catholic school teachers have to give up to make room for the mandated dose of bureaucratically sanctioned informational texts?

It’s not too late for Catholic schools to reject Common Core, this latest federal overreach. It’s not too late to reclaim all that makes Catholic education unique and reflects the values of Catholic families.  It’s not too late to ensure that local parishes and schools are in the driver’s seat when it comes to defining curricula for our children.

The Common Core vs. the Classical Roots of Catholic Education

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In 1977, National Review reprinted a 30-year-old speech given by English mystery author, Dorothy Sayers, on the topic of education. In it, she pointed out evident deficiencies in public discourse that revealed fundamental flaws in British education at the time.  She whimsically proposed as a remedy a return to the Trivium-based education that formed some of the greatest minds in history, little dreaming that her proposals would be taken seriously.  Forty years later, American parents frustrated with an even worse educational situation took her proposal as the basis for a grassroots renewal of a classical approach to education.  Beginning with Douglas Wilson’s Logos school in Idaho and the homeschooling efforts of people like Laura Berquist (Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum) and Susan Wise Bauer (The Well- Trained Mind), classical education has become the way for hundreds of schools and tens of thousands of homeschooling families.

At the heart of Sayers’ proposal was the idea that primary and secondary education should be less focused on passing on the information needed to master prescribed subjects and more focused on making students capable and desirous of life-long learning. The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) for English Language Arts and Literacy, at first glance, might appear to share her goal.  The standards seem less concerned with passing on particular in- formation than with forming a certain kind of person, the “critical thinker.” Looking to make students ready for “college and career,” the CCSSI begins with the view that success in our information age demands the ability to sort through, make sense of, and judge the “staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally.” This raises the question for classical educators and any Catholic schools that value their naturally classical roots: Should they embrace the Common Core?  Is the secular world finally waking up to the needs that motivated parents have been trying to address for the last 35 years?

Catholic schools’ success historically has been based in a classical approach to education, even where substantially compromised by state standards and new theories of education.  Today’s best schools retain at least some key elements of classical education, especially with regard to the study of religion, history, and literature.  A closer look at the goals and methods of the Common Core reveals that they are fundamentally at odds with the discovery of Truth at the heart of an authentically Catholic education.

Ironically, it seems that the developers of the CCSSI would be sympathetic to Sayers’ criticism of the failures of modern education:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass pro- paganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?

Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly, and properly documented, and one that is, to any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?

The Common Core aims to address these issues by habituating students to “reflexively dem- onstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic.”  The CCSSI states that “(s)tudents are engaged and open-minded—but discerning—readers and listeners. They work diligently to understand precisely what an author or speaker is saying, but they also question an author ’s or speaker ’s assumptions and premises and assess the veracity of claims and the soundness of reasoning.”

So far, so good. But a deeper look shows that Sayers was not on the minds of the authors (nor were Adler, Hirsch, Bauer, etc., who are conspicuously missing from the extensive bibliographies cited in the Appendices).   The thousands of contemporary classical educators inspired by Sayers should take a hard look at the approaches proposed to achieve these goals.  Some of these will be found in the standards themselves, even more in the assessment-driven, industrial way the CCSSI has begun to be implemented.  One important difference they will notice is that Sayers emphasized that a renewed Trivium-based education would approach language development in a way natural to the young. In the grammar stage younger children (up to around age 11) naturally learn by absorbing language and facts.  They are not ready for critical thinking; they are ready to trustingly accept whatever is presented to them in an orderly, engaging manner.  Learning by heart and careful observation are key powers to be developed, not just with facts and vocabulary, but with the beautiful rhythms and rich images of the best poetry and prose. By contrast, though the CCSSI proposes some excellent works be introduced to the young, learning by heart seems to play no role.  The Common Core intends to make critical thinking, embodied in literary analysis, the focus of every grade level. Sayers strongly warns against this approach:

The modern tendency is to try and force rational explanations on a child’s mind at too early an age. Intelligent questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and rational answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot readily enjoy and remember things that are beyond his power to analyze—particularly if those things have a strong imaginative appeal (as, for example, “Kubla Khan”), an attractive jingle (like some of the memory-rhymes for Latin genders), or an abundance of rich, resounding polysyllables (like the Quicunque vult).

In the CCSSI, every grade level is dominated by dialectical/logical/critical activities that are most appropriate for what Sayers described as the “Pert” age, those pre-adolescent and early adolescent years of questioning and challenging.  Common Core methods thus push young children into finding their own truths, and also neglect what is natural to older adolescents at the Rhetorical stage. The desire to investigate and formulate ideas about what matters to the student. The dialectical stage begins to close as students desire to really know what they have begun to care about.  “Towards the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be beginning to discover for themselves that their knowledge and experience are insufficient, and that their trained intelligences need a great deal more material to chew upon. The imagination—usually dormant during the Pert age—will reawaken, and prompt them to suspect the limitations of logic and reason.”  Sayers emphasizes that “the attitude of the teachers” will be crucial; they must see the goal of the education and be aware of how each student is progressing towards that goal.  This means that teachers must have much more freedom from bureaucratic assessment if they are going to succeed.  Implementation of the CCSSI in our assessment-obsessed educational culture is sure to mean much more harassment for teachers and much less time for them to actually work with students.

Sayers insists that the Rhetorical stage of development demands greater freedom on the part of the student to pursue subjects whose truth really matters to them.  This is because Sayers’ ultimate goal, (one which classical schools have embraced) is to provide for each human being to flourish as individuals who can contribute to the common life but who are not in service to it. This puts her, and all classical educators, fundamentally at odds with the CCSSI. Although the Common Core Standards seem to have similar aims for student formation, the overall goal limits and colors everything in them.  “The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”  The overriding economic concerns permeate the standards. The critical thinking skills are finally about economic success, not just for the individual, but for the sake of national economic growth.

This latter consideration has raised a great wave of outcry and concern from the classical community, and with good reason.  In the 1950s, Bell Telephone instituted a 10-month intensive introduction to liberal arts education to its most promising, technically-trained employees. The program was judged a great success by participants and the professors who organized it. Bell, however, was not pleased with the outcome:

But Bell gradually withdrew its support after yet another positive assessment found that while executives came out of the program more confident and more intellectually engaged, they were also less interested in putting the company’s bottom line ahead of their commitments to their families and communities. By 1960, the Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives was finished.

“The end is the cause of causes,” and the temporal, economic goal of the Common Core will drive it to neglect—if not positively avoid—the means that would truly open minds and hearts to what is most humanly fulfilling.  St. Jerome Academy in the Archdiocese of Washington has gained national attention for its success after choosing a decidedly different path from the assessment-driven, fragmented education of government schools.  Faced with declining enrollment and on the verge of shutting its doors, St. Jerome converted from a traditional parochial school to a Catholic classical school.  Blessed with a number of CUA professors as parishioners, the school benefitted from a dedicated team of educators, theologians, and philosophers who developed a comprehensive new educational plan in less than one year.  St. Jerome’s curriculum goes beyond Sayers’ essay, incorporating her insights but setting them in a broader vision of the goals of a Catholic classical education:

St. Jerome School educates children in the truest and fullest sense by giving them the necessary tools of learning and by fostering wonder and love for all that is genuinely true, good, and beautiful.  …We seek to incorporate our students into the wisdom of two thousand years of Catholic thought, history, culture, and arts so that they might understand themselves and their world in the light of the truth and acquire the character to live happy and integrated lives in the service of God and others.

The Common Core also wants to educate for life, but it articulates life’s highest goals as career success and productive contribution to the global economy. Cultural tolerance is another crucial outcome of the Common Core. Content must be drawn from a wide-range of cultures, leading students to be able to work well with the variety of cultural and personal viewpoints of their future corporate fellow laborers.

Students appreciate that the twenty-first-century classroom and workplace are settings in which people from often widely divergent cultures and who represent diverse experiences and perspectives must learn and work together.  Students actively seek to understand other perspectives and cultures through reading and listening, and they are able to communicate effectively with people of varied backgrounds.  They evaluate other points of view critically and constructively. Through reading great classic and contemporary works of literature representative of a variety of periods, cultures, and worldviews, students can vicariously inhabit worlds and have experiences much different than their own.

Of course, as in many areas, the CCSSI is here proposing some things that any teacher would want for her students. However, under the guise of mutual understanding, curricular materials are likely to usher in an aggressively secular orthodoxy.  Without a strong commitment to the existence of objective truth and an awareness of the contributions of Catholic civilization, CCSSI will lead us to the sort of openness that is the virtue of the “dictatorship of relativism,” as Alan Bloom warned us in The Closing of the American Mind:

Openness—and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings— is the great insight of our times.  The true believer is the real danger.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative intends to form literate, thoughtful, critical readers capable of understanding and judging the best literature and the richest informational literature.  But not only are its goals limited—even subversive with respect to a Catholic education—it represents a massive educational project that has not been tried.  Catholic classical educators have now more than three decades of experience and over two thousand years of expertise to draw on.  Now is not the time to submit children enrolled in any Catholic school to untested, yet no doubt very constraining, shackles.

To the extent that any Catholic school teaches the fullness of Truth in the faith, it offers a piece of the classical vision in its search for wisdom and virtue.  Over recent decades, however, many Catholic schools have adopted secular curricula as well as secular instruction and assessment techniques that undermine the unity of faith and reason.  In this trend they have followed the pattern about which Sayers warned, with the focus on conveying information needed to master prescribed subjects.  By contrast, the time-tested classical approach engages children to discover the truth of reality, both visible and invisible.  This is active learning, not passive learning.  It cultivates habits of mind that allow the human person to discern what is true, good and beautiful, to glimpse the transcendent.  It awakens the soul.

Ironically, it may be the Common Core State Standards Initiative that will awaken all Catholic educators to reject encroaching secular content and methods, and to rediscover the riches of their own tradition.  Given the unique, supernatural beauty of the Catholic faith, they should be decidedly skeptical of anything that bills itself as “common.”

10 Critically Important Adaptations to the Common Core for Catholic Schools*

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This publication is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initiative and how those standards potentially impact Catholic education. 

As of yet, there has been no serious effort to analyze the impact of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)1  on Catholic education—one that engages Catholic school educators at all levels as well as parents, the primary educators of their children. In view of the current environment, it would seem reasonable for those in leadership positions in Catholic education to pause, reflect and plan prior to moving forward with either adopting or adapting the CCSS.

But in the complex environment of operating a Catholic school system, there may be instances where, for whatever reason, a Catholic School has decided to implement the Common Core State Standards.  These schools claim that they are not entirely assimilating the troubled and controversial public school standards, but rather “adapting” the standards by changing them to fit with their Catholic mission and pursuit of academic excellence.

While such an attempt (sincerely implemented) is a step above merely copying the public school system, it does not address the fundamental conflict associated with the integral formation of students.  Since standards drive curriculum, a Catholic curriculum must include standards that are integrated with the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church.

For example, consider that Catholics have much to say about literature, history, science, and, above all, about Truth, goodness, and beauty.  And, since the object of every academic disci- pline is truth, the Catholic curriculum should be based on the conviction that all truths ultimately converge in their source—God.  This standard, among others, is sorely lacking in the Common Core.

If a Catholic school or school system chooses to take the more problematic road of adapting the Common Core Standards (as opposed to creating their own standards), the Catholic school system would greatly benefit from a public discussion (or basic research) about how—if at all—Catholic schools are actually changing the Common Core. Additionally, parents should ask their Catholic school officials what elements of the Common Core (if any) they have found necessary to change/adapt.

As yet, there has not been a significant study or public discussion as to what possible changes Catholic schools might be making in voluntarily implementing the Common Core in our schools. I would like to take the initiative to begin this discussion by enumerating ten important changes to consider.

1. Renounce the English Language Arts (ELA) Percentages for Literary and Informational Texts (which are not research-based).2

  • Do not alter your literature selections based on the standards.  Stick with the best literature from recognized masters. Use great works with compelling themes that speak to the heart of the human condition across the ages. Do not remove poetry, drama or literature; conversely, do not artificially add more informational texts into your ELA program.
  • Throw out the Common Core Appendices. These claim to provide examples and recommended texts. Stick to your tried and true curriculum as much as possible if using Common Core Standards.

2. Reduce textbook use when possible.3

  • Move to actual documents and unadapted works. Middle and high school students should not use mass-produced anthologies. Give them the actual texts. This allows them to mark up the texts and keep them on their library shelves at home for future reference or re-reading. Also, a “between-the-covers book” slows down instruction and respects the dignity of the work.  It allows the students to feel that they are getting the “real deal” and not an excerpt or adapted exposure to the brightest and most creative minds. Even if they do not read the entire work, students now have access to it.
  • Set your teachers and students free with authentic, un-sanitized texts and original questions and assignments. Because the Common Core allows for generic national lessons and lesson plans on topics presented in textbooks, there is a risk of homogenization and standardization, which runs contrary to human diversity and exploration.

3. Respond to the texts, not the Standards.

  • Do not use the Common Core Standards as the primary guide for inquiry into litera- ture. The Standards attempt to dissect literature into a set of measurable skills or generic questions.4   However, literary study should not be stuffed into a pre-determined standard or examined with canned questions, which do not directly emanate from the experience of reading a particular work. Literature needs to be unleashed and encountered “as litera- ture”—the product of a creative mind in dialogue with the reader in exploring the human condition. Treating literature simply as grist for the mill of college and career readiness saps its transformative power of inquiry and translation of experience. Yes, there are some relevant skills that the discipline of literary study requires, and the Common Core identifies some of these; however, development of these skills/tools  should not become the goal of reading great works.
  • Stay away from canned materials and exemplar units. The best teaching is creative, adaptive and natural, as the teacher and students explore the wonders of reality together with joy, passion and excitement. Keep your teachers and instruction creative. Exemplar units and straight textbook “canned” instruction are fine for the teacher to consult so as to get an idea of how effective lessons and units can unfold; just make sure that they do not become the basis of your regular lessons. Some teachers may try to ensure test score suc- cess by not straying from the approved lessons, but authentic learning is often messy and organic—and risky. Beware that computer-based instruction can also be overly scripted and become a crutch and distraction.

4. Do not take the Common Core’s rightful emphasis on text-based arguments too far.

  • Do not follow the Common Core’s philosophy that the only way that a student can demonstrate knowledge gleaned from a text is using evidence from the text to support their claim. While careful textual citations of evidence is key, the Standards say that “student knowledge drawn from the text is demonstrated when the student uses evidence from the text to support the claim about the text. Hence, evidence and knowledge link directly to the text.” However, in Catholic schools, knowledge is attained and demonstrated when the human intellect, informed by the senses, judges things rightly. Our criteria include not only the text itself but also a rich and wonderful world outside the text (which the text might brilliantly unveil—sometimes with life-changing effect). Evidence and knowledge are certainly based on the text; however, they are ultimately grounded in truth, beauty and goodness. If we miss this, we miss everything about Catholic education.
  • Allow discussion about outside texts or ideas. Do not discourage middle and high school students from also making extensive references to other works; historical, philosophical and religious trends; or their “gut responses.” Do, however, be sure to require rigorous scrutiny of their positions and gut responses and link those back to explicit under- standings and assumptions about the world as well as the topic under exploration.  Teach them to unpack their responses in clarity and truth—not to suppress them so as to simply stick to the world of the text or increase standardized test scores.
  • Conduct a little test preparation. Teach older students how to sanitize their normal “human” responses for the purposes of the standardized test evaluation.

5. Avoid premature use of technology, peer-editing, research and rhetorical pedagogy in place of good old-fashioned writing instruction.

  • Use pencil and paper when you teach writing to young children. Technology is only a teaching tool, not a magic smart pill. Using technology to write can wait. Do not panic that your elementary students will be “left behind” if you are still teaching them to handwrite. None of us over 40 had computers in school, but we have managed somehow to be smart, productive, technologically proficient 21st century learners. Technology is the easy part; thinking clearly and deeply is the hard part, and this can happen without extensive technology. We don’t know what type of technology our students will have at their disposal in 15 years, but we do know what type of brains they will have; we need to prepare those brains for maximum clarity and facility of thought.
  • Avoid the early emphasis on peer-editing (a teaching technique and not a standard) and the too early emphasis on research. The Common Core requires peer input and writing using a computer in 1st grade, and “research” with technology in 3rd grade. Younger children may not be ready to evaluate, process and synthesize another ’s work and insights and should focus on their own thinking and writing. It is easy to find out (or copy/plagiarize) what others think; it is harder to clarify your own thinking and find your own voice. Young students deserve adult guidance at this stage and not the faux guidance of their peers who cannot teach what they do not yet know.
  • Remember that the goal of writing is to communicate the truth. Writing should not be viewed simply through the Common Core lens of effective rhetoric, where students learn how to manipulate words and use standard grammar to produce a cogent, if not somewhat detached, argument.5  Writing should fundamentally be at the service of truth, beauty and goodness, and it should assist the student to articulate his or her understandings or insights based on penetration into reality.  Naturally, since it is also a social activity, writ- ing should follow conventions of grammar and reason in service of the truth and effective communication. In sum, writing is ordered toward an explanation of one’s encounter with truth, goodness and beauty, but it can still attend to some of the Common Core’s skill- based focus.

6. Create your own explicit standards for your junior high and high school literature classes.

  • List the critical texts, time periods, authors and genres that you expect your students to cover. The Common Core Standards only chunk and repeat the same empty skills year after year. While this provides some generic guidance, it does not account for adequate content coverage or skills development necessary for effective high school literature.

7. Do not alter your math progression.

  • Keep mastery of the standard algorithms using multi-digits at the levels they are currently found. Do not delay these for a year as suggested by the CCSS.  Keep addition/ subtraction in 2nd-3rd grade, multiplication in 4th, division in 5th.
  • Keep Algebra in 8th grade as the norm for your school. A non-algebra track for struggling students can also be offered for those who fall short of the norm.
  • Keep your geometry program unchanged. Do not follow the unorthodox and failed version presented in the Common Core.
  • Develop explicit standards for classes necessary for future science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) majors. There currently are no explicit standards for classes such as pre-calculus, trigonometry, statistics, number theory, calculus, etc.

8. Avoid the temptation to push “higher-ordered thinking skills” too quickly.

  • Give novices (that is, grade school students) the direct instruction that they need. Be extremely wary of Common Core “inspired” instruction that over-emphasizes or pushes higher-order thinking skills too far down into the younger grades, especially in math. This causes an unnecessary sense of confusion or failure, which can lead to frustration and dis- taste for math at an early age. Experts are the ones who benefit more from a constructivist/exploration-based environment, and properly educated high school students are typically entering this “expert” level of mathematical reasoning. Hours lost in prematurely forcing younger kids into expert/abstract  thinking not only leads to frustration and a loss of confidence, but also it comes at the cost of exposure to necessary basics that they will need to become authentic experts in the future.
  • Continue to emphasize memorization in the younger grades. This is the raw material upon which abstract reasoning will draw, as their intellects naturally and gradually mature and bloom.

9. Avoid teaching to the tests.

  • Focus on good instruction, not this or that test. This is your competitive advantage in a Common Core test crazy environment. Enjoy having more time and freedom to teach; your students will flourish more in the long run. Catholic schools know this from years of experience with not getting trapped into incessant state testing. Authentic tests will expose authentic learning: good instruction trumps unnecessary testing.
  • Do still give norm-referenced tests with post-Common Core validity such as the Iowa’s to assist with student formation.
  • Do plan for SAT/ACT testing courses to be formally placed in your high school curriculum. Teach students in a discreet course “how” to take a standardized test and respond to prompts in a Common Core expected manner.

10. Keep the greatest distance possible between your curriculum and the Common Core Standards.

  • Do not cheerlead for the Common Core. If you are using the standards, that is one thing; there are many usable parts. However, there are also many deep problems with them (perhaps as with any set of standards). When parts fail or weaknesses become evident, you do not want to be married to them.
  • Do not praise the Common Core: Let it sink or stand on its own without your prior validation. The Common Core Standards are untested. They claim to be more rigorous and focused than many state standards, but that claim is up for debate. What is not up for debate is the fact that states with “rigorous and focused” standards do not have higher test scores than states judged to have poor standards. There is no correlation between state standards and test scores, as strange as that seems.
  • If you use the Standards, set them as sub-floor but not as a foundation for your Catholic education. The Common Core Standards can possibly be a partial and lower (but not critical) part of your larger more lofty efforts at complete human formation.  Our foundation must always be Jesus Christ.
  • Interpret the Standards as loosely and broadly as possible. Do not attempt to tie daily instruction and lesson plans directly to the Common Core Standards as is required in many public schools. Nevertheless,  it is possible with creativity and a healthy skepticism of the philosophies animating the Common Core Standards to give many of them a distant nod. This means essentially saying, “Well yes, when I glance at the Common Core Standards every now and then, I can point to places somewhere not too far from our grade level curriculum where we pretty much do something like that.” In other words, this approach entails not being faithful to the intent and explicit wording of the Common Core, but just acknowledging them close enough to get by.
  • Normally such behavior is witnessed when conscientious objectors face the tyranny of an unjust law or authority, and this is better than faithfully instituting the flawed Common Core program; but again, why would Catholic schools, who are not required to teach to the Common Core, select this less than ideal approach?
  • We do after all owe it to the world to witness to the Truth about authentic education and about the human person. We also owe a duty to the majority of Catholic children who at- tended public schools to voice our opposition to the flawed program to which they are being subjected. Some public school supporters of the Common Core point to our schools and say, “See, if the Catholic schools are using it, it must be good!”

With so many concerns, one wonders why Catholic schools would base their efforts on the Common Core at all. Catholic schools have had unparalleled and enviable success for decades using their own standards.

I am concerned that many Catholic schools may have jumped on the Common Core band- wagon too early. After all, the Standards have not had adequate opportunity to be vetted; no “body” of Catholic scholars or educators—especially the parents, the primary educators—has thoroughly explored or discussed them. There is no harm in hitting the pause button and continuing the conversation, as we watch the untested Common Core Standards unfold in the public school arena.

Regardless, as some Catholic schools choose to adapt the Common Core, it would benefit us all to discuss openly what is being adapted and why. As with any initial conversation, these remarks and ideas cry out for correction and expansion. I look forward to the conversation.

* The title has changes from the original, “10 Minimal Adaptations Catholic Schools Consider Making to the Common Core State Standards”