Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Bigger, Better and Beyond the Book? | Truth in American Education

Bigger, Better and Beyond the Book? | Truth in American Education:


Bigger, Better and Beyond the Book?

I was introduced to Dr. Rozlyn Linder’s blog today by a friend.  She the K-12 District Literacy Specialist in Douglasville, GA and an avid advocate of the Common Core State Standards.  Today she opined that those of us who are critics of the Common Core, in particular, the ELA standards are uninformed and we need to read the standards.
As a proponent of the critical analysis shift demanded by Common Core I regularly speak out about the divergence from teaching the canon and centering all instruction on works of fiction. As I read blogs and posts I have finally come to realize that there is a serious misconception about what it means to teach skills rather than text. Battle lines are being drawn that demand that teachers get on fictions side or the oh, so, awful side of informational text. This fierce call to battle is misguided and ironically built on a failure to read—the actual Common Core standards.
I agree.  Read the standards.
The topic of concern for many of us is the chart