Chicago Teachers Union Breaks With Common Core
Yesterday, in a vote that shows democracy is alive in the American Federation of Teachers, members of the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates voted -- reportedly unanimously -- to join the growing national resistance to the Common Core standards.
A statement released by the union says,
Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.
Local president Karen Lewis said,
Common Core eliminates creativity in the classroom and impedes collaboration. We also know that high-stakes standardized testing is designed to rank and sort our children and it contributes significantly to racial discrimination and the achievement gap among students in America's schools.
A year ago, I wrote this post, encouraging teacher union leaders to "get off the Common Core train." As we now know, the tests aligned with the Common Core do not deliver equity. Instead, since they invariably yield much lower scores for students -- especially English learners and those with disabilities, they reinforce inequities.
As I wrote a few months ago,
My number one objection to Common Core and the associated tests is that they are being used to rank and sort students, teachers and schools. That appears to be their purpose, from start to finish. The farther into this experiment we get, the more devastating this latest sorting mechanism appears to be. Every time you stamp "college ready" on a student who has cleared the bar, the students that did not make it past that hurdle are stamped "unworthy." When the vast majority of English learners, African American and special education students fail these tests, we cannot allow this to be heralded as an advance for equity. It is a swindle, a hoax and a fraud.
AFT president Randi Weingarten has been increasingly sharp in her criticism of Common Core implementation, especially as regards the tests in New York state. In an April 29 interview with Josh Eidelson, Weingarten explained her stance:
The Common Core is not a silver bullet, and it's not the only thing kids need for a good education, but it does have the potential if done right to move schools to routinely thinking about critical thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization.It's not going to happen when we're in the middle of this fixation on testing, and particularly on high-stakes testing. It will happen if, you know, there's a lot more thoughtfulness aboutChicago Teachers Union Breaks With Common Core - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: