A version of this story appeared in the March 28-April 10, 2014 print issue under the headline: Catholicizing the Common Core.
Third-graders at St. John Berchmans School in Chicago walk outside Sept. 6, 2013. Catholic schools in the Chicago archdiocese are implementing the Common Core State Standards.
Join the Conversation
Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more
March 20, 2014
Two-thirds of Americans haven't heard of them, but they're already in place in half of the country's public schools, shifting the way students learn and teachers teach.
They are the Common Core State Standards: a new set of national academic guidelines and a source of passionate opinions and fervent debate. And while an August 2013 poll showed 62 percent of Americans had not heard of Common Core, educators say its impact will reverberate throughout the nation's classrooms, from public to private to Catholic.
