Standards are not a Curriculum - Standards et Curriculum sont deux choses différentes

Forty states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards to date. 

The terms "standards" and "curriculum" are often—and erroneously—used as synonyms for one another.  

Standards define what children should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. 

A curriculum specifically describes what children need to learn to meet those standards.

                       

The Common Core State Standards leaves curriculum decisions to the states, but the message is clear and unambiguous: there must be a curriculum and not just any curriculum will do. Successful implementation of the new standards depends on a coherent, specific and content-rich curriculum.
                 

The Core Knowledge Sequence is just such a curriculum.

Source : Core Knowledge 

Les standards (indicateurs des savoirs à atteindre en fin de classe) ne sont pas des curriculums (ou programmes).

Quarante Etats, ainsi que le District de Columbia, ont adopté à ce jour les Standards d’Etat communs fondamentaux (Common Core State Standards).

Les termes « standards » (savoirs attendus en fin de classe) et « programmes » (curriculum) sont souvent – et de manière abusive – utilisés comme synonymes l’un pour l’autre.

Les standards définissent ce que les enfants devraient savoir et être capables de faire à la fin de chaque classe.

Un curriculum décrit précisément ce que les enfants ont à apprendre pour atteindre ces standards.

Les Common Core State Standards laissent les décisions en matière de curriculum aux Etats, mais le message est clair et non équivoque : il doit y avoir un curriculum (programme) et ce n’est pas n’importe quel programme d’enseignement qui fera l’affaire. Une mise en place couronnée de succès des nouveaux standards dépend d’un curriculum cohérent, précis et riche en contenus.

La séquence Core Knowledge constitue justement un tel curriculum.

Les programmes 2008 pour le primaire ne sont pas en fait de vrais programmes, des curriculums, mais des standards.

Now Comes the Hard Part

by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
September 27th, 2010

 

Over the summer, 37 states agreed to adopt a single set of K-12 standards in English Language Arts to define the competencies needed for citizenship, productivity, and fairness. It’s a long overdue reform.  But now comes the hard part – figuring out exactly the new standards mean for the day-to-day work of teaching and learning in U.S. classrooms.  It is one thing to insist, as the new standards do, that history and science be taught alongside literature during the many hours spent on literacy in elementary school.   But the ultimate effectiveness of this new effort will turn on another key provision of the new standards – the requirement that literature, science, history and other topics be dealt with coherently from earliest grades, at first in oral form, and that they be integrated with the whole of the K-12 curriculum.  

Any discussion of the new Common Core State Standards must begin with a clear understanding of what the standards do and do not say.  It has been contended that schools in the adopting states will all be teaching exactly the same things at the same time.  Wrong.  The content that teachers teach and children learn is “curriculum.”  Standards and curriculum are not the same thing.  The Common Core Standards do not guarantee a uniformity of educational experience any more than auto safety standards force Americans to drive a single kind of car, or building codes make every house look the same.  The Common Core standards describe the desired outcome only, not precisely what must be taught and how to achieve it.  This distinction between standards and curriculum is no mere pedantry.  It’s not lack of standards but of a coherent and content-rich K-8 curriculum that has created our chronic education crisis.  Curriculum dilution, especially in Kindergarten through fifth grade, has depressed student knowledge levels, caused verbal skills to decline, and perpetuated a competency gap between demographic groups.   If the new standards are carried out well with coherent and substantive curricula, this new reform will begin to reverse the decline. 

Whole text on Core Knowledge Blog : 

http://blog.coreknowledge.org/author/hirsch/