UPDATE: Parents Please Do Ask Questions About the Common Core | Truth in American Education

Parents Please Do Ask Questions About the Common Core | Truth in American Education:

L.A. Times: It Would Be Better to Delay the Common Core

by Shane Vander Hart

The Los Angeles Times had an interesting op/ed today.  A noteworthy excerpt:

At the rate the state is going, teachers will end up being trained before the English curriculum is even in place, and instruction would start before the new textbooks are in anyone’s hands. Yet if the school reform movement has its way, teachers will be evaluated in part based on how well their students do on the very different standardized tests that go with the new curriculum. Reflecting the concern that teachers throughout the state have been expressing, one California teacher recently tweeted that within a couple of years, “we start testing on standards we’re not teaching with curriculum we don’t have on computers that don’t exist.”

Teachers justifiably fret that they’re being set up for failure. Schools worry about finding the money to make all this happen…

…Experts are divided over the value of the new curriculum standards, which might or might not lead students to the deeper reading, reasoning and writing skills that were intended. But on this much they agree: The curriculum will fail if it isn’t carefully implemented with meaningful tests that 

Parents Please Do Ask Questions About the Common Core

by Shane Vander Hart

U.S. News & World Report had an article on the Common Core, Kelsey Sheehy writing at their High School Notes blog said parents should ask three basic questions:

1.  Why are they backtracking (speaking of state officials)?

Actually state officials are not backtracking because they were not brought into the decision-making process to begin with so that isn’t an accurate picture of the situation.  In many cases they want to do their due diligence like Sheehy is asking parents to do.

She said the reasons that some oppose the standards are:

In most cases, opponents of the standards argue three points: That the state’s own standards are already rigorous, that the effectiveness of the Common Core standards is not proven and that national standards diminish the autonomy of state and local education officials.

Actually I’d also add the process was flawed, there are problems with the content and the federal involvement is illegal.
2.  What will it cost?
Excellent question – we still are not completely sure.  She made the following point that I have in discussions