A big problem with the Common Core that keeps getting ignored
Marion Brady is a veteran educator who has long argued that public education needs a paradigm shift, though not the same one pushed by school reformers who champion the Common Core State Standards, school choice and vouchers. Brady says schools need a complete transformation in what and how students learn. He has also been highly critical of standardized testing. Here’s his latest piece on the Core. You can see some of his earlier pieces here (One way to solve America’s major curriculum problem) andhere (‘The Procedure’ and how it is harming public education).
By Marion Brady
The role of the Common Core State Standards in attempting to improve schooling has prompted countless editorials, op-eds, and letters to editors. Opinion about them has split political parties, faculties, and friendships, and even created an unusual progressive-conservative alliance in opposition.
Defenders of the standards have had considerable success convincing the public that those who reject them do so because they oppose education reform, are poorly informed, are under union thumbs, or don’t want to face the fact that their kids aren’t as smart as they thought they were.
I oppose the standards, and none of those apply to me.
My primary concern isn’t with the quality of the standards themselves. I don’t like how they were created and rammed into place, but what’s done is done. I think they’re part of an elaborate ideology-driven scheme to privatize public schooling, but that fad will probably have to run its course. It’s appalling that the life chances of millions of kids and their teachers hinge on the scores of tests that can’t evaluate original thought, but that will continue as long as most people think “educating” means “delivering information.”
I oppose the Common Core State Standards primarily for a thus-far ignored A big problem with the Common Core that keeps getting ignored - The Washington Post:
