dianeravitch | I have thought long and hard about the Common Core standards.
I have decided that I cannot support them.
In this post, I will explain why.
I have long advocated for voluntary national standards, believing
that it would be helpful to states and districts to have general
guidelines about what students should know and be able to do as they
progress through school.
Such standards, I believe, should be voluntary, not imposed by the
federal government; before implemented widely, they should be thoroughly
tested to see how they work in real classrooms; and they should be free
of any mandates that tell teachers how to teach because there are many
ways to be a good teacher, not just one. I envision standards not as a
demand for compliance by teachers, but as an aspiration defining what
states and districts are expected to do. They should serve as a promise
that schools will provide all students the opportunity and resources to
learn reading and mathematics, the sciences, the arts, history,
literature, civics, geography, and physical education, taught by
well-qualified teachers, in schools led by experienced and competent
educators.
For the past two years, I have steadfastly insisted that I was
neither for nor against the Common Core standards. I was agnostic. I
wanted to see how they worked in practice. I wanted to know, based on
evidence, whether or not they improve education and whether they reduce
or increase the achievement gaps among different racial and ethnic
groups.
After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I can’t
wait five or ten years to find out whether test scores go up or down,
whether or not schools improve, and whether the kids now far behind are
worse off than they are today.
I have come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards effort
is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted
upon the nation.
The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the
District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on
the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea
how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of
guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.
