You can’t take politics out of education
Twitter was all abuzz Friday night with common core proponents attempting to stem the tide against the common core state standards initiative. Under the hashtag #ccsstime being led by the Learning First Alliance @LFA, a conversation about how to fix the implementation of Common Core is on going. This little exchange caught my eye.
Debbie says common core is just common sense. First, I must wonder if she has read the standards herself. The language used in the standards is not common sense. They read more like a legal document. That is why so many districts spent big bucks from their professional development budgets to “unpack” them in the last couple years. Teachers did not quickly and easily understand them which they would have done if they were just common sense. If she is saying the concept of having common standards is just common sense I would insist that she justify that statement. The only common standards that I believe everyone could agree on are that our children should be able to read and write, and know some very basic math (the kind that would be taught up through about 6th grade.) Beyond that, there is no real justification, if we are talking about benefiting the children in particular, for them all to learn the exact same thing or even the same skills. Their goal in life will be to be able to differentiate themselves from others in order to better their position in the workforce (I’m using the reformers language here so they can understand.) If we mold them into interchangeable workers who all learned the same things, how will they be able to do that?
But what struck me more was the last bit about there being no politics in education. That caught LFA’s attention too as noted in their response “let’s set politics aside.” I’m not sure what they think You can’t take politics out of education | Missouri Education Watchdog: