New York’s ‘shoddy’ Common Core rollout puts special-needs students at risk; a veteran teacher demands a moratorium
My mother died suddenly last month and my father is in prison. There are five of us now from 8 to 17 years old who are essentially orphaned.
We were just evicted and now I’m sleeping on my grandmother’s floor along with my mother, her boyfriend, my four brothers and our two dogs. It is cold and I am tired.
Jennifer Curley
I couldn’t go home yesterday because I live where they make methamphetamine, and the police found out. The entire street is blocked off.
The above scenarios — distilled from the voices of my students — represent just a few of the challenges faced by middle-school students living in poor upstate New York communities like mine, where I teach special education students who learn in different ways and at different paces than their same-age peers. Many of my students have experienced more trauma and loss in their 12 or 13 years than most of us will in our lifetimes.
Yet, in this era of the new Common Core State Standards and hyperfocus on testing, so-called education reformers continue to insist that “one-size-fits all.”
As a 22-year veteran teacher, I know — as do my colleagues — that students with disabilities are suffering profoundly as a result of the cookie-cutter philosophy accompanying Common Core, an
New York teacher speaks out: “A moratorium on the Common Core Standards frightens me”
When it comes to the debates around the Common Core State Standards and how best to educate our children, I have a unique perspective: I am a parent of school-aged children, a high school English teacher, and an adjunct college instructor. Every day, through these lenses, I am reminded of how important the Common Core standards are to our students. I’ve seen and experienced the effects of the impl