Stephen Krashen on the Common Core Standards
This letter by Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus of education and linguistics at the University of Southern California, will be posted today on the New York Times website. I just received it:
The common core movement seems to be common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.
The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in