Expert: Common Core flawed in trying to standardize children
LAKE GEORGE Common Core is not developmentally appropriate for students and was pushed down the throats of educators without teacher input, says a veteran educator who now speaks out against it.
“This was not led by the states. It was fed to the states,” said Peg Luksik, chairwoman of Founded on Truth, an organization speaking against the learning standards.
Luksik, a 35-year elementary and special education teacher from Pennsylvania now living in Virginia, was invited to speak by New Yorkers United for Kids, a group opposing Common Core.
About 40 people attended the event held Thursday at Lake George Town Hall.
Luksik was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and worked in the U.S. Department of Education reviewing curriculum. She explained that although the Constitution does not say anything about the federal government having a role in education, presidential administrations from Lyndon Johnson through Barack Obama have attempted various reforms.
Starting with President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, education shifted to standards-based reforms. The goal was that every child in America was going to be 100 percent proficient.
Luksik said that was unrealistic. It is like saying that every third-grader will weigh 90 pounds and be 4 foot 1 inches tall, she said.
“Your ability to learn is as unique as your height and weight. Developmentally, you can’t mandate how you learn. That’s what this did,” she said.
State inequities
Another major problem is that the states could develop their own assessments and set the bar for passing the tests where they wanted. She said states, by and large, set low passing marks so they could show proficiency.
Not one single state set their passing marks to align with the standard set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Luksik added, which is a different test that students take and considered a top standard.
Despite statistics saying they were passing, students were not ready for college-level work, according to Luksik. Many students had to take remedial classes that don’t earn them credit.
There was a push by education reformers to create a new curriculum. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave large sums of money to educational groups for this project. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers picked up on the idea and wanted to create a set of common standards, which came to be known as “Common Core.”
“We don’t know who did what inside that work group. Everything to date remain shrouded in Expert: Common Core flawed in trying to standardize children:
