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How you can Be A Common Core Learning Hero
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May 30, 2025
If you're a parent I know your reaction to me saying "Common Core", but if you're an educator, you understand the problem and promise of a curriculum built around common standards for academic achievement. You also know that each state has its own spin on Common Core. As a parent and educator, I talk about what Common Core is really meant to address and why it might be a bit bumpy on the way but is also our best chance for improving education across the board in the United States of America.
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hi Dave Taylor here and I want to talk
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to you about being a learning hero who
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doesn't want to be that now I'm a dad I
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got three kids and I'm also an educator
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and I have a degree in education so I
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really really understand the challenge
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that modern education faces we live in
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an extraordinarily heterogeneous society
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which is to say we got lots of kids from
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lots of cultures lots of languages and
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certainly lots of different kinds of
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families and we need to figure out how
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to educate all of them now you can't
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actually succeed at something unless you
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can measure it and that's what common
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core is about the idea is that we need
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to figure out a way to standardize the
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testing and I know you're thinking ooh
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standardized testing not good but in
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fact the way that this has all come
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about is actually pretty interesting so
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common core is this sort of movement
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within the education world and it's
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built on a couple of different companies
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that do assessments and what they're
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trying to figure out is using Real World
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Knowledge how can we actually measure
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across cities across schools across
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classrooms how kids are doing if we can
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actually do something fairly
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standardized then we can actually
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measure which schools are doing well and
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emulate those and which schools are
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doing poorly and figure out how to give
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them more resources to make it better
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now one of the things that a lot of
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people believe is that Common Core is
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this sort of national curriculum or
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National Standard and the answer is that
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that's not true and in fact each state
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has the option of implementing Common
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Core and not all of them do some of them
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don't and some of them have said well
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we're going to do our own spin on it and
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we're going to use it our own way and
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that's cool and the thing is is that we
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need something we need some way to
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assess how our kids are doing in school
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because otherwise we have no idea which
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teachers are good which schools are good
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and which kids are actually coming out
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successfully and here's the thing a lot
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of kids aren't making it through High
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School the statistics are alarming just
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in my home state of Colorado only what
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is it like 75 percent of kids actually
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graduate high school and when you look
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just at Denver public schools and of
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course Denver's the biggest urban area
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that we have in the state in Denver
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public schools just a little more than
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50 percent of the kids that start high
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school graduate high school
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now I look at those numbers and I'm
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really alarmed because that's our future
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and if we have that many kids that can't
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even make it through those high school
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years where are they going to be in 5 or
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10 or 20 years they're not going to be
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the captains of industry not so much
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they're going to be the ones working as
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a greeter at the local convenience store
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and so I really support Common Core and
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the way that it can help us assess and
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figure out how our kids are doing and
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here's another thing that's really
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important is that the way it's designed
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it's really trying to test what they
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know and what they can figure out so
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it's not memorize all of those questions
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so that you can score well the kids have
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to do essays they have to actually
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figure out real world problems and use
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problem solving like little tiny
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Sherlock Holmes and figure all that out
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to be able to do well and the other
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thing that the Common Core testing does
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is it identifies specific areas where
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kids might need additional help and
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that's really great because from a
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teacher's perspective that's the kind of
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thing where you can get a lot of
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information across all the kids in your
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classroom and then you can say well you
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three let's figure out a way to get you
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doing better with english comprehension
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and as for you too you're doing Rock and
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grade in math let's see if maybe you can
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help the other kids keep up so Dave
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Taylor I write for gofatherhood.com I
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have three kids of my own and I'm an
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educator and you know it's a really
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really hard problem but I support Common
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Core and I just want to say real quick
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at the end here is it's going to be an
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adjustment there's going to be a period
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of time where it's going to seem to be
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implemented poorly and indeed there
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might be some teachers that really don't
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fully get it that's okay I think we all
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need to have some patience because we
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got a really really big problem so if we
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all work together you know we might just
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be able to make this work out a whole
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lot better this is Dave Taylor and I
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appreciate you watching
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thank you
#Kids & Teens
#Primary & Secondary Schooling (K-12)
#Standardized & Admissions Tests