The U.S. News and World Report – The Hechinger Report
“Former teacher Lauren Castillo sat in the back of a first-grade classroom at Truesdell Education Campus in Washington watching Sarah White’s morning lesson slowly fall apart. The students, many of whom speak a language other than English at home, were struggling to make an outline for a paragraph that would answer the question, “Why is it important to save money to meet your needs?” Castillo, an instructional coach at the school, jumped in when it became clear that even White’s keenest kids were totally lost, but still, by lunch, none of the first-graders had come up with a concluding sentence for their nascent paragraphs. Both Castillo and White, who planned the lesson together, knew that it was going to be challenging for the 5 year olds, but the lesson was on par with what White is expected to do under the Common Core educational standards, a set of grade-level expectations in English and math adopted by more than 40 states and the District of Columbia.”(more)