Louisiana Educator: The Common Core Debacle Proves We Can't Educate Kids Better Than a Cave Man.

Louisiana Educator: The Common Core Debacle Proves We Can't Educate Kids Better Than a Cave Man.

The Common Core Debacle Proves We Can't Educate Kids Better Than a Cave Man.

Here is an excellent article describing the real reasons for the teacher shortage happening in other states as well as Louisiana. The following is a quote in the article from a teacher who quit teaching recently partly because she felt that the new Common Core based system imposed on her school did not allow her to address her students' individual needs in reading. She was teaching 8th grade English and had found that many of her students were reading at second or third grade level:

"At a staff meeting with a school district testing data coach and our principal, I brought up the lack of reading skills in my eighth-graders. How was I expected to bring them up five or six grade levels in one year so they could pass the state test in February and April, I asked.

Their reply was: ‘Don’t talk about kids who can’t read and our responsibility to educate them, and don’t ask questions. Head down; mouth shut. You’re no longer teachers, but managers and monitors of information."

Notice how similar this description of teacher frustration is to my earlier post on the Louisiana teacher shortage. There is now little respect for the professional opinions of teachers. The unrelenting drive is a total focus on preparing kids to score well on the state tests. But that school system has found out, just as we in Louisiana have, that the imposition of slavish prep for the state testing has not really significantly raised test scores after all.

In this post, I want to focus on the current negative effect of the CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: The Common Core Debacle Proves We Can't Educate Kids Better Than a Cave Man.