So, though I doubt it will garner anything more than an eye roll and maybe an Oh, she's the developmental one... followed by yet another eye roll, here's my response to the survey:
Common Core $tate $tandards $urvey
1. What are you particularly excited about
regarding the transition to CC$$?
·
Is this a trick
question? (I really wanted to say Are you fucking kidding me? but I'm trying to be somewhat professional.)
· And BTW - Most teachers don’t
even know what the CC$ are or how they will impact our students and our
profession.
2. What obstacles or issues do you foresee?
· Continued de-professionalization of teaching
· Teacher burnout from over a decade of top down mandates that
have yet to close the achievement gap.
· Continued student burnout.
· Increased stress experienced by children, teachers and school
districts due to increased high-stakes testing.
· Continued mislabeling of
children as failures because they are not
developmentally ready to master the standards.
· A further narrowing of the curriculum
3. What essential questions do you have
regarding the $tandard$ or the transition?
· Why are only TK and K having to implement the CC$ in the 2012-13
school year? (Though I'd vote for NO one implementing them next year, or any year, for that matter!)
· Implementing the CC$ will be co$tly (follow the money): more
profe$$ional development; more high-$take te$t$; more technology; new
textbook$, etc. How can there be adequate
funding for implementing all aspects of the CC$ when we are experiencing continued budgetary crises?
· The CC$ will require substantially more high-$take$ te$ting
(Stephen Krashen predicts that testing will increase 20 fold.)
o
More high-stakes testing
= less teaching.
o
More high-stakes testing
= more teaching to the test.
o
How are we going to protect our students from such abuse?
· The CC$ were NOT developed by classroom teachers or child
development experts. We will still be in a ‘one size fits all’, test-centric
environment, expecting ALL children to learn and master standards at the same
pace. How will this benefit our children?
· Will our curricula become
even more narrowed? (Hint: Yes)
· Will our curricula become
even MORE test focused? (Hint: Yes)
· And, yes, are the CC$
developmentally appropriate at any grade level? (They aren’t at my grade level and they go against best practices based on rigorous,
peer-reviewed research.)
·
The CC$ diminishes the
importance of fiction and personal narrative writing. Coleman, a leading idiot author and smarmy architect of the CC$, expressed his view of personal narrative quite succinctly: “[A]s you grow up
in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel
or what you think.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu6lin88YXU
Coleman is not an educator. Bill Gates, who bank rolled the CC$,
is not an educator. Are we comfortable implementing
standards that were determined by non-educators?
·
Have we learned nothing from the failure of NCLB? Basing everything on one test score is lunacy. The
most important things cannot be measured. Creativity in American students is
declining. Duncan, Gates and Obama would never submit their own children to
these mandates. Why are they submitting ours?
·
Will the CC$ eventually be challenged in the courts
as a violation of federal law that prohibits the federal government from
imposing a national curriculum on our nation’s schools?
·
How will implementing the CC$ close the achievement
gap? Please be specific and cite peer-reviewed research to support your argument.
Interesting links addressing the CC$:
NCLB’s Lost Decade
for Educational Progress:
What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?
What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?
