First in a series
[img]2264|right|Dr. Krumpe||no_popup[/img]It is easy enough to learn that the final letter at the end of both of Dr. Katie Krumpe’s names is sounded, at least by those who wish to properly address the newest assistant superintendent in the School District, by way of Torrance.
Challenge No. 2 is more complicated.
Obtaining bristling clarity about Dr. Krumpe’s all-consuming headline project since arriving in August, and possibly for the rest of her natural days, is a task slightly taller than Mt. Rushmore.
What is Common Core, the new, gigantic, seemingly intimidating overhaul of America’s grading and teaching systems that sails on its maiden voyage next September?
The subject emerges from the depths because several years ago the Washington font of federal educational wisdom concluded that American schoolchildren were two standards shy of a load.
• Uniformity desperately was needed. The U.S. secondary school system was an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of slipshod standards that varied as widely as the distance from Maine to Oregon.
• The level of learning from coast-to-coast not only varied as widely as the moral difference between Miley Cyrus and Smiley Burnett, it was less ambitious than that of many foreign countries.
When Supt. Dave LaRose was asked for a painless-to-swallow definition and characterization, he prescribed a two-word cure:
“See Katie.”
If it is less complex than Obamacare, the difference may not be wide enough to steer an insect through.
When you understand that it takes a plump year to prepare, plainly Common Core is not as simple as, say, getting married. And you know how thickly dense that exercise is.
Asked to describe Common Core in somewhere south of a million words, Dr. Krumpe opened with a polite correction of one of her visitor’s assumptions.
“Common Core is not about grading,” she said.
Then lucidity set in.
“Common Core is more about expectation level of the students in this country in language arts and mathematics, and what it is they are expected to know and be able to do.”
(To be continued)
