Bill Schecter: Remembering a Teacher With an Uncommon Core
Guest post by Bill Schecter.
A Boston-area college recently asked if I would like to blog about the Common Core, the national curriculum standards soon to be implemented in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Supposedly the brainchild of the nation's governors, the Common Core represents the latest approach to reforming our educational system and ensuring equal opportunity for all American children. The goal is a national curriculum based on uniformly high standards.
While always happy to share my opinion, I demurred, feeling I should actually know something about the Common Core before rendering judgment. I confess had grown a bit weary of the panaceas whizzing by me on the ed reform superhighway. I also had to cop to cynical preconceptions that the Common Core approach would quite similar to the "MCAS" version of education reform we've been suffering under in this state since 1993. The tyranny of high stakes, standardized tests, the narrowed curriculum, the test prep in place of teaching, and the teacher evaluations based on data points-these predictable and lamentable consequences were familiar to me.
A Boston-area college recently asked if I would like to blog about the Common Core, the national curriculum standards soon to be implemented in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Supposedly the brainchild of the nation's governors, the Common Core represents the latest approach to reforming our educational system and ensuring equal opportunity for all American children. The goal is a national curriculum based on uniformly high standards.
While always happy to share my opinion, I demurred, feeling I should actually know something about the Common Core before rendering judgment. I confess had grown a bit weary of the panaceas whizzing by me on the ed reform superhighway. I also had to cop to cynical preconceptions that the Common Core approach would quite similar to the "MCAS" version of education reform we've been suffering under in this state since 1993. The tyranny of high stakes, standardized tests, the narrowed curriculum, the test prep in place of teaching, and the teacher evaluations based on data points-these predictable and lamentable consequences were familiar to me.