Dennis Van Roekel’s Continued Common Core Crush
Today, National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis Van Roekel once again reinforced his devotion to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Mind you, he tried to make his open letter appear to be a “learning experience” in which he had “listened”; however, what Van Roekel is actually doing is publicly reiterating his allegiance to a set of hastily-constructed, untested standards for which the equally-hasty rollout was “botched.”
Just last month– January 2014– Van Roekel maintained that no one could tell him any specific standards that were problematic– and that anyone objecting to CCSS had to offer “a better alternative” even though he referred to CCSS as a “best guess.”
In his current letter, as far as Van Roekel is concerned, it’s all about the “botched rollout”– never about the forced implementation.
Van Roekel is careful to never mention any teacher as having any valid, experience-based negative reaction to the standards themselves.
In short, Van Roekel’s letter is a calculated CCSS sales job– nothing more than another effort to Save the Standards.
Throughout his letter, Van Roekel refers to statistics from his biased NEA survey– which I dismantle here.
Van Roekel opens his letter with, “During my 23 years as a high school math