My Contentions with Common Core

     As a parent and a teacher, I have the privilege of viewing the implementation of the Common Core State Standards from two distinct perspectives. I don't like what I see from either side. Ever since I saw the first common core aligned state exam in ELA, I have been gathering research and watching a grassroots opposition form. In an attempt to divide and conquer, pro-core sentiment has ranged from calling its dissenters "teabaggers" to "lefties" and everything in between. Education officials have dismissed offhand the growing resistance as nothing more than "special interests" or my fave,“white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” It was all I could do to refrain from correcting our U.S. Secretary of Education's grammar in order to illuminate the irony of it all. Today's post is about why the Core doesn't come with a bag of chips.

       Those who oppose the Common Core State Standards do not do so because they are "afraid of change" or "don't want high expectations". It's actually quite the opposite. Over a hundred years of scientific research have taught us how the human brain develops and learns. The CCSS do not take ANY of this research into account - most prominently, the work of Piaget, who outlined the cognitive stages of development. The cognitive processes expected of the youngest learners by the Common Core Standards are physiologically impossible. It's like trying to push a toddler down the stairs, when that familiar "step-together" method is taking too long, because eventually they will need to learn how to alternate feet. They will get it when their brains are developed sufficiently to do so, and no sooner.

     The unfortunate blunder of the architects of the CCSS - none of whom actually had any background in teaching and learning (google "the secret sixty") - was to back-map the curriculum. This is akin to building a house from the roof down. What we are left with, then, are expectations requiring operations of a pre-frontal cortex that is not physically developed yet. This is why parents of students in the primary grades are seeing such frustration from these children. While there may be some valuable material within the standards, when the foundation is un-sound, the walls will crumble.

      In fact, There is NO RESEARCH whatsoever buttressing the supposition that these standards are effective. Bill Gates - THE major financial contributor to the development of the standards - has been quoted as saying, "We won't know for another 10 years whether our education stuff worked." David Coleman, the "architect" of the Common Core State Standards was quoted as saying: "we're composed of that collection of unqualified people who were involved in developing the standards...I probably spend more time on literacy because as weak as my qualifications are there, in math they're even more desperate in their lacking." This is the person who has just been appointed to upend the SAT to make it Common Core aligned! He was introduced by Lauren Resnick as having "been involved in virtually every step of setting the national standards and he doesn't have a single credential for it."

     Two major educational leaders, who were on the validation panel for the standards REFUSED to VALIDATE them. Dr. Sandra Stotsky - the writer of the ELA Standards for Massachusetts reiterated that the standards were developmentally inappropriate and do not focus on literature enough to effectuate the "critical thinking and analysis" that the CCSS purport. Dr. James Milgram, the ONLY mathematician on the panel advised that the standards would leave students 2 years behind in math by grade 7 - ensuring that most students would not have the background courses needed to attend a 4-year University. In fact, the creator of the math standards, Jason Zimba admitted this inconvenient truth - that our students will be prepared only for Community College. Those of us who have been paying our school taxes to ensure that our children get a great education and go on to excellent colleges should be OUTRAGED by this!

     So why rush headlong into adopting these poorly constructed, developmentally inappropriate, and ultimately inadequate "standards"? Follow the MONEY. Gates, Pearson, the Waltons, Murdoch, and their ilk stand to make BILLIONS by siphoning off money earmarked for public education into private, corporate hands. Gates was clear about this at the 2009 National Conference of State Legislators, while speaking of Common Core: "For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products."

Fighting the federal intrusion into what should be a state and local matter has proven to be comparable to battling the Krakken. There are many more tentacles (high stakes testing; the commandeering of students' private, personally identifiable information to third parties; the intrusion of unqualified TFA ranks, privatization, educational programming based on student aptitude tracking, etc....) that will be addressed in upcoming entries.