The Huffington Post – Katrina Boone
“Are Americans today the dumbest they’ve ever been? It’s a question that had kept me up at night…The students I taught in my first years were unmoored, adrift in a world saturated with affordable technology, disconnected from the short stories, novels, and writing assignments I presented to them day after day. Two years later, though, Kentucky teachers, along with teachers all over the country, began implementing the Common Core State Standards, which call for students to read appropriately complex texts, grapple with academic language, ground their ideas in evidence, and read more nonfiction, especially about history, science, and the arts…Instead of just learning about the difference between adjectives and adverbs…students learn to make thoughtful, persuasive choices as speakers and writers. The Standards emphasize using evidence to support their inferences, to read groups of complex texts and synthesize the ideas and claims of other authors to form their own. They learn how to think, solve, and create…I’ve been blown away by the development in their analytical skills as they engage in complex conversations with their peers. Students in this generation support their ideas with evidence, collaborate, and respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives.”(more)