Today I am going to jump right in and will be following up from last week's post. What exactly is Common Core and what is so bad about it? Why are the new standardized tests that resulted from CC so detrimental? Here we go. (Please note that I will not be citing every piece of information and data I provide. Although I have essentially done my own literature review, it is outside the scope of this blog.)
Common Core is simply a list of standards in which a child is expected to master by the end of each grade level. Easy enough right? Here are the complications with it (I will primarily be focusing of primary grades since that is my specialty):
1. Standards need to be developmentally appropriate. Here is a FACT. Early childhood educators did not participate in developing the standards. Of the 135 people that wrote the standards, not one was a K-3 teacher.
2. There is absolutely 0, zilch, nada, no data or research what-so-ever to support the implementation of Common Core Sate Standards (CCSS). In other words, standards were written but never pilot tested. Furthermore, there has been no provisions for on going research. The consequences? If you currently have a child in school he or she is a guinea pig. Until the government blatantly sees failing test scores (and suffering children) CC will remain....unless parents fight back and start opting out.
3. Implementation disaster!!!! CCSS were thrown at teachers and students all at once and at the same time. A more appropriate implementation would have been to begin the standards with students entering kindergarten. Instead, students who had already been accustomed to learning in one manner and to one set of core standards for 5, 10, 11 years were expected to immediately shift gears. Could you do that with out a learning curve?
4. Children are born originals! The academic skills mandated, particularly in grades K-3, assume all children develop and learn at the same rate and in the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth. In FACT, 20+ years of research validate that children between the ages of 0-6 progress at varying rates the most. For example, some babies begin walking at 9 months of age while others don't begin until 15 months. This concept parallels reading, writing, and math development as well.
5. Children have their own melody to which they play. CC does not take this into account. Play is the foundation for learning and has now been stripped from classrooms. Teachers were once systematic facilitators of play for the most imperative reasons. Play not only stimulates physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development in children, it is also how they investigate the properties of the world around them. This is hard wired in our brains as humans. It's how we learn self-control, problem-solving, creativity, develop an attention span, and build executive functioning skills.
6. Riga who? RIGOR! Most people define rigor as rigid and difficult. Real world educators, however, use the term rigor to develop rigorous learning experiences targeted at a student's learning level. That is, experiences that, facilitate the ability to think critically, flexibly, and creatively at that particular child's cognitive ability and prior knowledge. CC certainly is rigorous like they claim to be. Rigid, inflexible, unyielding, developmentally inappropriate and maintains no regard for all of this. It's highly prescriptive curricula focusing on test preparation and skill building in early academic years has "serious implications on a child's development" (as stated by the Alliance for Childhood). High intensity does not equal high quality!
7. Poverty is poverty is poverty. The fact remains that the districts that need the most funding get the least. Developers of CCSS falsely imply that if we PRESSURE and FORCE children to learn material far past their developmental abilities, poverty will somehow be combated. As an educator who has taught both general and special education students I have witnessed one massive complication when this avenue is taken. Children who are pressured and forced will either rebel or retract. They will act out (and not learn) or they will be ridden with anxiety and sickness (and not learn). Sooooooo, how again does this resolve poverty?
Why are politicians and large corporations (this is in FACT who is driving the "education reform") trying to strip the originality from our children? Why are they trying to break them down? Why are are they holding school funding hostage? In NYS, our dispicable Governor Cuomo, will not provide any extra funding to NYS public schools UNLESS they agree to follow his CC and APPR agenda. How is this a democracy? How is this humanity? How is this fairness? This war I fight for my children is not liberal vs. conservative. Jeb Bush is just as lethal as Hillary Clinton with the matter at hand. The fundamental change in power that has transpired in education has the potential to wreak havoc on our democracy.
Although this entry is quite long, what I have mentioned barely scratches the surface. I will discuss the dangers of standardized testing and the new APPR's in a following post. In the meantime if you have comments or questions please share them below!!! If you are an advocate of opposing the Common Core and High Stakes standardized testing please share this post. Remember the picture of that little blonde girl in the beginning of this post? She is the one who makes every day the best day of my life. I'm sure you have someone you regard as the same. Fight for them, opt out, spread the word, share this.