When you talk with Americans about how our education reforms are going, you will hear about something called The Common Core State Standards Initiative.  Usually, the words "Common Core" are uttered disparagingly.  Advocates for teachers resist the idea of education being reduced to something graduated and quantified.  Advocates for local control see The Common Core as a power grab by the central government.  Advocates on the religious right worry that the a liberal cultural elite will deploy The Core as a way to secretly teach their children subversive things like ... the actual age of the earth. Two and a half years ago, living on a kind of sabbatical in Nashville, Tennessee, I had direct and intimate experience with The Core.  Unlike most that opine about it, I was forced to read deeply into it and apply it in the context of a real teaching job.  At LEAD Public Schools, for English Language Arts, we used a Core-based curriculum called EngageNY.  Our first book was Linda Sue Park's A Long Walk to Water -- an absolutely brilliant choice.  Park's book is a very easy read that not only walks the reader through a wide range of cultural contexts but also exposes the reader to a range of literary techniques.  You can look through the first several weeks of recommended curriculum; I defy anybody to tell me that it is any less than a work of collaborative genius. Is absolutely everything you need in there?  No, but by the time you have studied the logic of how the lessons are laid out, it is easy to figure out what the students will take an interest in and find the supplements you need on line.  For example I realized that the concept of "culture clash" was vital to understanding the book, and that that was a concept that was eluding the students, so I showed them first this footage of Sudanese Sufis in Northern Sudan encouraging them to point out the similarities and differences between their culture and the culture of the Northern Sudanese Muslims.  Then I showed them footage of Dinkas in Southern Sudan -- getting them to articulate the cultural gulfs that must exist there, and the likely judgements people might make about each other.  EngageNY offers all sorts of opportunities like this to improvise ... ... IF the community entrusts the teaching profession with the power to adapt systems to the dynamic circumstances of a genuine learning community. But this is not where we are as a profession -- not right now.  It's not where LEAD was when I worked with them. The Common Core and its extensions, like EngageNY, are being used at LEAD (and probably elsewhere), not as a valuable tool for helping teachers to plan beautiful year-long courses, but as a short-cut device for making the claim to outside entities that the kids are being taught well.  Energy that teachers might otherwise invest in developing materials and making more connections for students they invest in making sure that adherence to The Core is clearly documented:  "You want to know how we teach our kids?  Look at EngageNY.  That's how we do it." We are too obsessed with the idea that being accountable means showing parents and politicians "what I taught" ... and then giving the kids some kind of assessment that "shows they learned it." Correct, you cannot teach if you aren't clear about what your are teaching, and whether or not it is being learned, BUT if that is ALL that you care about, you are not teaching. Your job is to facilitate the maximal experience of success — that is a SUBJECTIVE experience, so by definition, our efforts to make yourself accountable cannot end with “I taught this and we gave this assessment, and got this result.” As the primary in-the-room decision-maker -- your job is to draw the learner's unique GENIUS out into the world.  (I stole that from my Dad.) Systems, NOT CONTENT, is where education needs to look to optimize accountability.  LEAD actually had something that they would have argued is a "system."  We shared Google Drive folders with each other and entered all of our lesson plan information there. There was a highly involved documentation format where the teacher was expected to connect her/his lesson plan to The Common Core in as many ways as possible. This format was established by LEAD's central authority (which they called "NeST" -- Network Support Team.  It was an amalgam of templates used elsewhere.  I am fairly sure of that because there were layers of redundant information.  “What was your objective for this activity?”  “What Common Core Standard applies?”  “Which course objective does this apply to?”  “Students will be able to _______” And strangely, with all of this planning language, there was no environment devoted to post-mortem analysis.  Post-mortem happened around the copier or can’trightnowbutwalkwithme-type conversations. The best system evolves organically out of the classroom and emerges as an extension of how teachers communicate with each other and how they work together.  It needs to be a living breathing learning organism. Teachers need to stop railing against the system and advocating for particular curricula, and instead need to build the system to their purposes.  The right relations with their superiors and with each other, right relations with their students, and ultimately right curriculum will follow.