Student Perspectives on the Common Core: College Readiness and Critical Pedagogy at Urban High Schools

• In Event: 72.023 - Social Justice Standards: Does the Common Core Allow Room for Critical Pedagogy?

Abstract

According to the Common Core “Development Process” web page, the government, educational thinkers, teachers, and parents all contributed to the creation of standards document. Conspicuously absent from this detailed history is any input from students. The standards were intended to significantly shift the expectations for teaching and learning in public schools (Porter, McMaken, Hwang & Yang, 2011), but, few, if any scholarly studies have asked students how they perceive the instructional changes. Here, I report on interviews of 54 college-bound seniors from traditionally underserved populations regarding the extent to which students perceived the teaching of the new standards to be relevant to their homes and communities.

What did these students say about the transition to the Common Core standards? The interviews revealed a narrow instructional focus on canonical texts and European-centric perspectives in the content of their classrooms. The vibrant cultural resources of the surrounding urban neighborhoods or the collective challenges faced by nearby residents rarely found their way into the curriculum. The Common Core’s silence on issues of cultural relevance and its implicit support of canonical texts constitute a missed opportunity to promote critical, culturally relevant pedagogy, an important resource for college readiness for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.

Authors

• Suneal Kolluri, University of Southern California

• William G. Tierney, University of Southern California