Common Core standards drive wedge in education circles
WASHINGTON – When did fractions and non-fiction become so controversial?
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Teacher David Riesenfeld has been piloting Common Core standards in his 10th-grade world history class in New York City.
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A high-profile effort by a pair of national education groups to strengthen, simplify and focus the building blocks of elementary and secondary education is finally making its way into schools. But two years ahead of its planned implementation, critics on both the right and left are seizing upon it. A few educators say the new standards, supported by the U.S. Department of Education, are untested, and one Republican governor wants to block the measure, saying it's a federal intrusion into local decisions.
How did something so simple become so fraught?
The story begins in 2009, when the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers announced an effort to create voluntary national standards in math and reading. All but four states — Alaska,