Why You Cannot Trust Common Core Advocacy
I used to show my high school students a passage from Aristotle that was essentially a “kids today” rant, noting he wrote in the 300s BC. So I generally have little patience with anyone damning contemporary youth as if this generation is somehow quantifiably worse than the ones before. That is so much drivel.
Why Americans can’t write falls squarely in that sub-genre, but, alas!, that is just a mask for its real purpose: propagandize for the Common Core.
Before we look at the nonsense in this really bad piece of writing that claims kids today can’t write, we must note that the writer, Natalie Wexler, chairs the board of trustees for the Writing Revolution, self-described as “a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to teaching students from underserved school districts to think clearly and reflect that thinking in their writing.”
And here is the key bit of information: Who sits on the advisory board? David Coleman, grand architect of the ELA Common Core. Hmmmm.
So Wexler starts out by showing writing is in dire circumstances because of data from NAEP. The problem here is that in my own analysis of the writing section of NAEP, I have shown that the test is so badly constructed that we can draw no valid claims about writing at all.
If Wexler were credible on writing quality by American students, she would be aware that we have significant research on how students are being taught writing and what the Why You Cannot Trust Common Core Advocacy | the becoming radical:
