Common Core forums last night in the Bronx and Brooklyn: what a difference!
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| Me in the Bronx last night (credit: GothamSchools) |
It was a mixed crowd, but most of those who spoke in favor of the Common Core appeared to work at charter schools or were teachers affiliated with Educators for Excellence, an organization funded primarily by the Gates Foundation, that also funded the Common Core. The director of E4E, Evan Stone, spoke, as well as two (!!) of their Bronx "outreach" directors, one of whom had been laid off as a teacher when her school was closed last year.
Most of the speakers were against the Common Core and its associated testing regime. These included Mark Naison, a Professor at Fordham, who asked for Tisch's resignation, and several parents who decried how their Kindergarten children being subjected to inappropriate bubblesheets exams and worksheets. While Tisch said that the state did not support standardized testing for small children, the parents called her "disingenuous" and pointed out that these tests were on the NYSED's approved list of assessments. See this video of Monique Dols, a parent of a Kindergarten child at Dos Puentes, a bilingual school in Washington Heights.
Teachers decried how the scripted and flawed Common Core curriculum had taken all the joy out of teaching, and how students no longer had access to art, music and well-rounded education. Parents reported that their children who once loved school now cry when doing homework, and are made to feel like they are failures. The state had decided beforehand that 70% of the children would fail the tests, to what end? one asked. Another parent said th