Common Core will be fully implemented in school districts nationwide this fall with a primary focus on reading and math, but Oak Park and River Forest High School will also put the focus on other academic subjects, including science and world languages.
The state standards under Common Core include aligning school curriculum with college and career expectations for students, as well as enhancing students’ “thinking skill” abilities.
Common Core will be implemented in the freshmen and sophomore classes at OPRF this year but the goal is to have it for all classes, says Phil Prale, OPRF’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
Final enrollment numbers for the upcoming school year are typically released early in the fall. Based on last year’s tallies, OPRF had roughly 770 sophomores and about 800 freshmen enrolled. Junior and senior enrollment was about 800 each.
“I think we’re in a pretty strong position with respect to Common Core implementation,” he said. “We’ve been talking about tracking Common Core in our courses for the last four or five years since a governor’s committee first adopted Common Core and Illinois became a Common Core state.”
Illinois is among 43 states that have adopted the standards.
Prale said faculty and administration at the high school have been mapping out where it will appear in various courses.
“While the Common Core initiatives focus on reading and math, we’ll have it also take place in history classes, with the science teachers, and with our world languages teachers, and also our elective academic areas, really across the board. And that’s been going on for a good 4-5 years,” Prale says.
OPRF faculty has also been training in how to utilize the standards in their classes. During the summers since 2010, faculty have been developing new courses for the fall or spring semesters that utilize the standards.
“We feel we’re ready, we feel we’re prepared with solid Common Core implementation and articulation across the different course areas,” Prale said.
The division chairs, he added, have been leading that effort with the teachers in their departments. Implementing Common Core in core subjects and electives will be an ongoing process this school year, said OPRF Supt. Steven Isoye.
“The division chairs, including Fine and Applied Arts, are also working with aspects of Common Core.” In terms of history, he added, “There aren’t any history Common Core [standards] but there are aspects of English language arts that are germane to what’s going on in the history and social studies classrooms. So credit goes to the work that they are doing in order to get their teachers to recognize how they can pull in some of these into those areas.”
Aligning standards across grammar, middle and high schools is also an aspect Common Core. Prale noted that the high school has been working with both districts 90 and 97 on that front prior to Common Core’s implementation. Faculty from all three districts, for instance, have discussed algebra courses and what students and D90 and D97 are expected to understand, he noted.
OPRF freshmen and sophomores will be taking the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) exam next spring. Isoye said this will be another new aspect for school districts under Common Core, with the computer-based assessment replacing the traditional paper-pen format.
As for the standards themselves, Prale said Common Core is part of continuing evolution in education.
“We’ve had standards for years and we’ve adapted. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we had something called Illinois Learning Standards,” Prale said.
Prior to that, Isoye added, there was the Illinois Goal Assessment Program, or IGAP. The College Readiness Benchmarks, which came from the ACT, replaced the Illinois Learning Standards, Prale noted.
“When Common Core was introduced, we went back to our teachers and said, ‘Well, here’s a new or different set. Let’s see how much of this we’re already doing and what we’re going to need to be talking about in transitioning,” Prale said.
