Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: There's nothing wrong with Common Core Standards, except...

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: There's nothing wrong with Common Core Standards, except...:

There's nothing wrong with Common Core Standards, except...

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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has joined other top education officials to warn the public not to be alarmedby dramatically lower test scores following new testing standards.

There's nothing wrong with schools having high academic standards There's plenty wrong with having those standards handed down from on high and then bringing in multi-million-dollar ramrods on no-bid contracts to "retrain" teachers and principals into passive compliance. There is even more wrong with Common Core and it "rigorous" testing regimen being used to sort and track kids, opening up doors to college and employment to the few and shutting them to the many.

Case in point: The New York Times reports that New York State, an early adopter of the new standards, released results from reading and math exams showing that less than a third of students passed.

Making matters even worse, CC testing is almost entirely in the hands of textbook/testing mega-publisher Pearson. The Washington Post reports that Pearson just apologized for