Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Diane Ravitch and Antonia Crtese are cochairs of Common Core, a group
working to bring comprehensive content-rich instruction to every classroom
in America. Condensed, with permission, from the forward to the report
Why We're Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don't,
prepared by Common Core, June 2009. The full report is available at www.
commoncore.org/ourreports.php.
September 2009
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September 2009
37
. . . hatinai standards
will not improve
education unless they
ackhowledge that
content matters.
and to deduce solutions. Ihiagine
having to play a chess game without knowing how the pieces move,
or even the point of the game. Or
being told someone's rhetoric
sounds "Kennedy-esque" without
knowing anything about JFKor
perhaps not even recognizing
the initials. That is the level of puzzlement that people face when they
lack background knowledge.
We believe that all of America's
schoolchildren deserve to receive
the kind of comprehensive, content-rich education that will give
them the background knowledge
required to effectively pursue their
dreams.
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