Recently, I attended our local informational night about how the Common Core teaching initiative will be used within the state of Maine and our school district. The presenters were the Regional School Unit 23 superintendent, a school administrator, an eighth grade English teacher and a primary school teacher. All of the presenters were enthusiastic about the content and methods of the Common Core classroom instruction and the expected consistency of achievement measures.

The presentation began with the superintendent giving an historical perspective of the three influential factors leading up to present times:

• The federal government factor. The federal government initiated involvement in local schools in the 1950s over concerns with states that were not providing equal access to quality educational opportunities. The laws that resulted had some good intent, but from that time forward, the federal government consistently initiated fiscal incentives to move education toward equal outcomes and in return states were assessed for learning results.

• The “thought leaders” factor. Thought leaders in the 1980s began to promote the idea of outcome-based education. Subsequently, appointed leaders in the educational field determined content by identifying the need for 21st-century skills in the delivery of education. This body of work lead to what we now call the Common Core State Standards.

• The Maine factor. Individual states typically have had local control of their curriculum content and implementation. States adopted assessment systems that changed periodically over the course of time, becoming expensive to implement and codify, as well as being unreliable for reporting purposes.

Now here are the facts (as I understand them):

• The Common Core has been implemented in our district since 2010. Full implementation is set to begin in the 2014-2015 school year.

• (From the English teacher’s perspective), the Common Core’s content-rich texts were easy to implement and provided her classes with an enriching peer-to-peer learning experience.

• (From the primary teacher’s perspective), she’s extremely happy with the Common Core materials and is pleased with how her students engage with each other for critical thinking exercises and material review.

• In terms of the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA), which are used along with the Common Core standards, Maine is one of 26 states to use this tool. The (underlying idea) of these assessments is that parent involvement in the process of education will be instrumental to success. See www.smarterbalance.org for sample test questions.

I then asked questions base on what I heard:

Q: When a student meets the standards, what opportunities are there for them to exceed the standard?

A: The SBA tests each student with increasing complexity of questions. Once the standard level is met, the student will continue to answer questions above that level. In class, teachers will continue to challenge higher-achieving students with more challenging material.

Q: Will the SAT still be used?

A: The SAT will only be given to students who wish to go on to college.

Q: Do you see the training of teachers changing because of the Common Core initiative?

A: Yes.

Q: When you state that parent involvement and consistent monitoring are critical to educational success, do you see that a student’s measured result might involve intervention and monitoring in their home environment?

A: That would be nice in some cases.

The next week, I attended the Common Core information night in the neighboring school district. Their focus was on standards-based grading which will replace traditional letter grades with numerical grading marks.

No. 1 demonstrates little achievement and No. 4 demonstrates exceeding the expected achievement level. One subject would have several reportable measures, each represented as a number rather than only one letter grade averaged for all the content covered.

Of course, to implement this new grading system, Common Core Standards and curriculum will be used, as well.

The presenting teachers were very excited to be using the new system and parents were curious about the curriculum content, yet no concrete examples of the curriculum were shown.

My conclusion is that in these presentations, the educators overwhelmingly expressed how impressed they were with how Common Core content and methods would help the critical thinking skills of their students.

I have no doubt that this will happen. However, here are my concerns about the potential impacts of the Common Core implementation.

The ease of teaching applications can mean that future teachers will become facilitators instead of true educators. Also, teaching to acceptable standards can restrict progress toward the very best student achievement. Will results-based education hamper the critical thinking we expect of our own instructors to obtain all students’ highest achievement abilities?

Also, teaching to the standards could align our students with career outcomes that are programmed for their individual results. While having a career is a societal goal, could we be also end up categorizing each child within expected parameters of achievement instead of allowing each child to exercise their potential for greater success?

As we rely on experts to dictate these standards, what critical means is there to ensure these standards meet international benchmarks?

In addition, this process should be transparent to everyone. Are the Common Core State Standards really state specific or are the standards actually global and simply approved by each state?

Computer technology is a vital component of the Common Core curriculum and the Smarter Balanced Assessment. What are the infrastructure costs related to its implementation and continuation? How transparent are these costs to taxpayers?

Is the goal of this program to also ensure equal outcomes of school district achievements regardless of the local property taxpayer’s ability to pay for Common Core and SBA aspects of educational costs?

The federal government apparently did not create these standards; however, it has financed the effort with our tax dollars. Will state subsidies for this project be undermined in the future?

As we advance toward learning with the aid of computer technology, will students still be able to compute results through manual resources, such as pen, paper, and dictionary, and memory such as the times-tables? A true test of skill level when there is no computer aided technology should still be the basic fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic at all grade levels.

To read the Common Core Initiative’s FAQs go to www.corestandards.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions. Then ask yourself if the information is indeed transparent enough to make a societal change as large as this initiative expects to be. Also please, stay engaged with your school board to protect local control of public education.

Bette Brunswick is the city councilor from Saco’s Ward 3.