A Letter to Educators Who Embrace the #commoncore
Dear Educator Friends,
While the common core may not be an issue for you, or your school, do know that for others it will be a major issue. And the problem is this, while the standards might work for you and your school, there are many standards in CC that do not work for many students and many communities. Creating a set of national standards that cannot be changed, in which only 15% can be added (which must be approved by the DOE) is a serious problem when we know that the K-3 standards are developmentally inappropriate and will CRUSH children in high need/high poverty schools. There is no picking and choosing with CC - it's all or nothing - therefore, many children will be failed under this system. Your children may be unscathed, but for the students in my school - it will be devastating. The CC will fail many students, teachers, schools, communities. So, that's just my take on it when considering the standards as an innocent stand alone - which they are NOT. And of course, let's remember that they were not created by classroom teachers and they have never been field tested, this alone is enough for me to refuse the CC because I find it highly shocking that anyone thinks it is acceptable to use children as guinea pigs for an experiment created by the 1%.
However, let's then take a look at CC for the monster it truly is - let's throw out the whole conversation about good standards/bad standards because bottom line is that the bigger picture is not so much about the standards