Watch Michael Petrilli Spinning Common Core facts on C-Span
Is this C-Span interview factual or PR spin on Common Core by Michael Petrilli? You decide.
Right before Fordham Institute’s meeting on how to restructure State Education Agencies, Michael Petrilli appeared on CSpan talking about the Common Core State Standards:
It’s a fascinating 51:00 interview with comments from teachers and their frustrations about the Standards. Listen to Petrilli’s response to the teacher’s (Sarah) comments at around 17:30. She describes her difficulty in teaching when she is micromanaging targets and trying to create a love of learning. She “knows” how her students are progressing without excessive testing.
He starts out by being sympathetic, but morphs into the reasoning that the new standards are “harder” and that they are needed because so many state standards were low. He says teachers need more support, training and materials because it will be hard. He said something else very interesting in his response to the host: I wish, Steve, we were talking more about this, but instead, we are talking about the politics around this. He wants to not talk about the authentic discussion on the standards being inappropriate, nor the argument that the standards are copyrighted and cannot be changed, even if they are harming students.
Kudos to the retired North Carolina teacher Steve at 28:41. He tells Petrilli that the most important influence in a child’s life is parent’s, that NCLB was designed to fail with teachers being blamed, there is not enough money for any of these programs and he asks about Petrilli’s background as a teacher. Steve (in a very nice Southern accented manner) blasts education gurus Watch Michael Petrilli Spinning Common Core facts on C-Span | Missouri Education Watchdog: