Louisiana Educator: Statement to BESE on CCSS and PARCC

Louisiana Educator: Statement to BESE on CCSS and PARCC:

Statement to BESE on CCSS and PARCC

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has scheduled a special meeting On July 1, at 11:30 A.M., to respond to the executive orders by Governor Jindal that would stop the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the related PARCC testing. Assuming that BESE allows the public to comment before taking action, the following is the statement I plan to make before BESE:

My name is Michael Deshotels, and I am a retired Louisiana educator who writes a blog for educators and for parents. I am here to request that BESE consider at least a suspension of Common Core and the related PARCC testing in Louisiana until Louisiana educators can revise and improve our present Louisiana standards. I am talking about the standards that were rated second in the nation by Education Weekly just over 2 years ago. I believe there are several good reasons for a change in policy on CCSS and there is nothing more appropriate than correcting a policy that we have come to understand is wrong and harmful to our students.

There is growing evidence that the CCSS are poorly designed and the implementation of them is a boondoggle. Why would we want to subject our Louisiana students to this unnecessary experiment? Let other states use their children as guinea pigs while we in Louisiana continue and improve our own system.

In January of this year, I asked the readers of my blog to give their opinion on Common Core and PARCC. I have asked that each BESE member be provided with a copy of my post describing the results of the survey, but I will briefly summarize results of that survey here:

2,724 persons responded to the survey which was available on my blog for a 10 day period near the end of January of this year. My