Schools making ‘Common Core’ progress

PENN YAN, DUNDEE—The Common Core standards have been a point of controversy since their adoption by New York State. The purpose of the Common Core is to set higher standards of education in the subjects of math and English language arts, but has created issues for many school districts across the state when it comes to implementing these changes. In Yates County, both the Penn Yan and Dundee Central School Districts have made significant progress in making the Common Core standards work for them.
In Penn Yan, the district has taken a local approach to implementing the new curriculum.
“At Penn Yan Central Schools we decided to create our own local curriculum aligned with the broader Common Core Standards rather than adopt the district modules,” Penn Yan Superintendent David Hamilton said. “We made this decision in part because we wanted to begin writing our new curriculum in the summer of 2011 and implement it a full year prior to the changes in state testing. Our other reason for writing our own curriculum was because we wanted to make sure it fit the needs of our students specifically and that teachers had a voice in creating the themes, units and materials they would be responsible for delivering in the classrooms.”
Hamilton said the district first began implementation in the fall of 2011, and the district has “made steady progress.” He said teachers continue to meet with their departments and grade levels to revise the curriculum based on the experience with the initial implementation.
“Our teachers, parents and students have responded positively to the new curriculum,” Hamilton said. “I was recently in a classroom where the students had read a variety of fiction and nonfiction on an idea such as ‘persistence’ and were having a very lively discussion of that theme from the multiple perspectives in text as well as from their own knowledge and experience. As we move forward we’ll continue to have teachers and administrators work to add and enhance our local curriculum to make it fit the needs of the students at Penn Yan.”
 Hamilton said Penn Yan schools followed the state trend when it came to testing, seeing a drop in the “absolute point value of our assessment results at grades three through eight.” He said the lower scores were not a result of a sudden change in student skills, but rather a due to the change of the cut score for passing imposed by the state. Hamilton said theoretically, the change in passing score is intended to “raise the bar on all students.”
“We are encouraged by the fact that of the eight assessments given at these grade levels, six of our test results improved in 2013 compared with other districts in the region,” Hamilton said. “Our goal as a district is to be a regional leader in graduating students who are college and career ready. While test scores are not the sole or perhaps even most important indicator of our growth towards that goal, they are still important data to help us monitor our progress.”
 Hamilton said state funding continues to be one of the largest issues facing the Penn Yan district.
“Our greatest struggle moving forward continues to be state funding of education for low-wealth rural districts,” Hamilton said. “I’m encouraged by conversations we’ve had recently with State Senator Tom O’Mara (R, C-Big Flats) and Assemblyman Phil Palmasano (R, C, I-Corning) who also recognize the need to reform our state education funding system in general and the regressive Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) which takes money away from local school districts to balance the state budget.”
In Dundee, progress has been steady as students and teachers work to implement the new standards as the modules become available. Dundee Superintendent Kathy Ring said the standards are good for the education of students and will become easier to implement for the teaching staff in the near future.
“The Common Core are a set of standards that have rigor to them and they allow our teachers to teach with some depth and breadth, rather than have so many concepts that are a mile wide and an inch deep,” Ring said. “The implementation for us has been slow but steady. Our teachers were able to review the Common Core when it came out a few years ago. As a district, we spend a considerable amount of time just studying them so we were certain we understood them.”
Ring said one of the issues with implementation so far is the teachers have not had as much time to prepare their curriculum prior to actually teaching it. She said in years past, teachers have had the full year’s curriculum to work toward, while currently they are building the curriculum as they are going.
“We are staffing the modules that are aligned with the Common Core,” Ring said. “If there are issues, it’s that the modules have been relatively slow to come out. While teachers would typically have the opportunity to have the scope and sequence of their curriculum set at the beginning of the school year so thinking with the end in mind you knew exactly where you are going, the modules aren’t giving them the opportunity to do that. They’re learning as they’re going.”
As far as teacher reaction, Ring said the Dundee educational staff has responded positively to the Common Core. She said implementation would go even smoother if each teacher had more time to prepare.
“I think our teachers have embraced the Common Core, I really do,” Ring said. “I worry that the public confuses the reforms and lumps them all under the Common Core. [...] The Common Core is one piece of it. The APPR is another piece of it, the data portal is another entirely different piece of it. I think that if we had the opportunity to slow this train down a little bit, people would have felt a whole lot better about it. Our teachers all work to be in compliance and to provide the best instruction we can to our kids.”
Ring said the district is also taking measures to ensure the teaching staff is properly trained and knowledgeable of the new education requirements. She said this is being done through different programs available to the district.
“We have spent so much time in professional development, especially over the past two summers,” Ring said. “BOCES has offered this current school year something called Supplemental Educational Services, where we use our Race to the Top Dollars to buy into the service, and they provide us with 40 days worth of coaches throughout the school year who work directly with our staff on the professional development, on understanding the modules better and the kind of things we should be providing in our instruction.”
Ring said the students have been responding well to the new Common Core standards. However, Ring said she has also been contacted by parents concerned with their ability to help their child with the workload.
“Our students, I’ve been in a number of classes, especially in math I’ve seen our kids very engaged,” Ring said. “Parents on the other hand have called and said ‘I’m not sure I know how to help my child with this particular homework assignment.’ The teachers have said don’t worry about it, just have the kids come back in and we will go over the homework assignment the next day. We have also suggested to the parents that the Engage New York website is very helpful. [...] It’s a learning experience for everyone.”
Ring said Dundee suffered the same drop in test scores seen around the state, but added they were average or slightly better than many schools in some areas. She said the lower scores were due to the rapid change in what is an acceptable passing grade without having much time to prepare the students for the new course material. She said the district has not been plagued by any major issues and trusts the state will fix any unclear guidelines as they become apparent.
“We’ve not had big issues come up,” Ring said. “The rigor behind the Common Core is good. How can you argue with that? One of the requirements that became part of the APPR are the student learning objectives. There has been real frustration around developing those and the pre- and post-testing that is the initial interpretation on how you were to assess progress on those student learning objectives. As the state has recognized the unclear guidelines, they are attempting to make some adjustments to those. Our message to our staff has been our focus is on providing the best instruction we possibly can to our students, maintain that focus and as the state better understands the flaws in the guidelines, they will correct those and we will work alongside them.”