‘A Teacher’s Cry for Help’
by Eric Cooper
American education is at a crossroads. In developing standards that ensure our children are learning what they need to know to thrive in an increasingly competitive and global society and workplace, we must balance that imperative with the need to give teachers the space to use creative strategies to reach and teach all children.
Forty-five states have adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which are designed to boost critical and creative thinking and other higher-order skills students need to more actively and positively engage in their communities.
These skills are critical if schools are to be responsible for “shaping character, developing sound minds in healthy bodies … and forming citizens for our democracy, not just for teaching basic skills,” Diane Ravitch writes in The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010, p. 167).
Yet the gap between the creation and successful implementation of CCSS — and
