9 Ways to Help Parents Understand the Common Core: Jared Myracle, Author of Common Core Standards for Parents for Dummies, Shares His Top Tips for Ensuring That Your School Community Understands What the Standards Are-And What They Aren't

If there's one misconception that parents have about the Common Core State Standards that rankles Jared Myracle above all others, it's that somehow teachers are now having their curriculum dictated to them by the federal government. "It just couldn't be farther from the truth," he said. "We spend a lot of time clarifying that standards are just an expectation for what a student should be able to do at the end of the year and the curriculum is something [teachers] have developed by themselves or with a team of teachers across the school or district. Those are two totally different things. There's far less control over what is being taught than what opponents of Common Core would like to have you believe. " Myracle (pronounced "my-rackle"), the supervisor of instruction at Gibson County Special School District (TN), is the author of the recently published book Common Core Standards for Parents for Dummies ($9.99, Wiley). In an interview, he insisted that nobody can point to a Common Core standard and say, "I have a problem with this. I don't want my kid to evaluate information from multiple sources. That's not something that people are getting fired up about. " But there's no denying that opponents are getting fired up, among them many parents. Here, Myracle shares nine ideas for making sure that the parents in your district understand the Common Core, so that you can focus less on misdirected community protests and more on student learning. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1) Use multiple modes of communication. There's no right or wrong way to communicate about Common Core, said Myracle. "It's very much a potpourri of doing a little of this, a little of that. " For example, he writes editorials about the Common Core for one of the local newspapers. Updates are posted to the school websites and other social media. The schools hold evening events to walk parents through a simplified version of the implementation plan. Then the parents go off to their children's classrooms with the teachers to work through basic exercises so they can learn what to expect. Attendance at these events varies, he noted. Whereas some schools attract half of their families, others get just 15 or 20 percent. The point is "to keep adding more layers to that and add an extra coat of paint every year. Last year we did this, and now this year we're going to do this and this--because people prefer to communicate in different ways. Some parents would rather come to an event and some would rather read a letter. " 2) Develop a message and hammer it home. Myracle's district always starts its communication from the same place: "What we've done in the past just isn't good enough. " The district offers proof by sharing a comparison of end-of-school assessments and ACT results. In the first, a large majority of students score as proficient in English: in the second, only a fraction of students meet the benchmark. "We know ACT is more aligned with college and career expectations. We don't know that about our state assessments. There's obviously a gap between what we're expecting on our state assessment and what we know they're going to need in college and career. [The use of the Common Core] is how we narrow that gap. " Another concept that's been effective with both parents and teachers is the "umbrella" metaphor "We have one umbrella in my district, and that umbrella is college and career readiness," said Myracle. "If it doesn't fit under that umbrella, we're not going to spend much time on it. It's not important. Whether it's social skills, academic skills, things they learn in athletics or extracurricular activities, those things need to contribute to what that child wants to do when they graduate from high school. We try to frame the conversation around preparation for college or career. And Common Core happens to be the next thing that we're using to get their kids across that finish line. " 3) Keep everybody on message. …