A sampling of Arizona students will be taking Common Core tests soon to see how they work. (We call it College and Career Ready Standards here. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.) So it’s a good time to take a look at who’s for Common Core and who’s against it. In one segment in this month’s Tucson Cable Access show, “Education: The Rest Of The Story,” which I host with Ann-Eve Pedersen, we take a look at who are the folks on the three sides of the issue: the supporters, the detractors on the right, and the detractors on the left. Here’s the short version.
Supporters include Obama, his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Jan Brewer, John Huppenthal and lots of others along the conservative-progressive continuum. They like it because they think it’s good for kids, good for business or a combination of the two.
Detractors on the right include Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Al Melvin, and many others, including most of Arizona’s right wing. For them, the Common Core standards are the Feds flying black education helicopters overhead to soften up our children’s minds so they’ll yield to the will of their socialist overlords. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
Detractors on the left include education historian Diane Ravitch, most people in the Network for Public Education and a sizable number of scholars, educators and parents. I include myself in that number. It’s not so much the standards we object to, which are worth taking a serious look at and improving over the years. It’s the testing, which will be even more restricting than tests like AIMS and will encourage even more teaching to the test while making it almost impossible to evaluate and reshape the unproven standards.
This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2014.
I find that most who oppose Common Core, do not have any school age children in their homes and are not educators. Those of us who have some reasonable concerns about the implementation of the program and are involved with education, realize there are some issues to be worked out of this new program, but over all Common Core will benefit our children. It’s the self-centered politicians and those over 55 who are out of touch, that only speak up on an election year. Common Core was approved in 2010, where were the concerns over curriculum then? Only now that the schools have spent so much time, money and effort to implement this program does the opposition show up. Lets stop using our children as political tools and put them first, all of our futures depend on it!
As a veteran teacher who has worked in TUSD, Amphi, Sunnyside, and Marana districts, I don’t know anyone who DOESN’T oppose Common Core. Sure, there are those who prefer it marginally over the former, banal standards–but they do so much in the way that one might prefer, say, genital herpes over leprosy. Most educators I know–myself included–detest (npi) the idea of an unproven, corporate-driven set of “national standards” being shoved into our classrooms, especially under the guise of “fixing” our “failing schools.” Common Core won’t “level the playing field,” it won’t fix poverty, and it won’t create a more vibrant democracy. What it will do is line the pockets of Gates, Pearson, et. al. (who stand to make big bucks from the instructional materials/technology and assessments that accompany CC) and further promote an already abusive culture of standardized testing, while at the same time failing to attract and retain exactly the sort of intelligent, creative educators that the public school system so desperately needs. In short, dismantle Common Core.
I have a school age teenager and I oppose this. Everyone seems to be held by fear of retaliation in this state, u need to stand up and fight for our kids rights.. I agree I see people are opposed but we no longer live in a country were u can speak your mind and there is mutual respect despite your opinions.
I don’t think this is that black and white. I just want to know how will this help or hurt my child’s education or is this not going to make a difference. Is this country no longer for a thinking of growth or are we two busy arguing. I am tired of the JUDGING and the LABELING and the anti American way of thinking. WE all need to wake up….