Louisiana Educator: As Usual, Classroom Teachers Left Out on CCSS

Louisiana Educator: As Usual, Classroom Teachers Left Out on CCSS:

As Usual, Classroom Teachers Left Out on CCSS

Veteran Lafayette Parish educator Vincent Barras has written three important pieces about the new Common Core State Standards. All educators should read both Mr Barras' blog by clicking here and also here, and his letter to the Baton Rouge Advocate titled Look Who Designed the Common Core, by clicking here.

Mr Barras is just the kind of classroom teacher we would all like to have teaching our child math. He understands how children learn math because he has taught it all his professional life. He is just the type of educator that should have been consulted on the elements of the Common Core. He is the kind of teacher who has a true love for his craft and who should have participated in the actual writing of the new standards.

The problem is that developers of the Common Core had apparently no interest in consulting real classroom educators. Mr Barras in his letter to the editor reveals the fact that the developers of CCSS were mostly far removed from the actual classroom. He also pointed out in an email to me that two distinguished members of the CCSS validation committee who have valid credentials in education practice have refused to sign on and opposed the standards.

But the most insulting part of this for Louisiana classroom teachers is that our State Superintendent and BESE adopted the standards sight unseen (See the Crazy Crawfish blog) and without consulting a single Louisiana classroom teacher. If parents wonder why such an impractical system could be used by Louisiana teachers to teach children in both public and many parochial schools, the answer is that teachers were never consulted and teachers were never given a choice!

As far as Superintendent John White, Governor Jindal and 9 of 11 members of BESE are concerned, teachers are just small cogs in the massive machinery of education reform. Their job is not to question why, their job is simply to do or die! If that sounds a little too dramatic, just talk to any classroom teacher you know