Dear (School Board, Supt. & Asst. Supt):
There
has been a great deal of controversy over the implementation of the Common Core
Standards. Indeed, several of the states
that had previously accepted the Standards, along with the federal money that
came with them, have been reconsidering.
These Standards were often accepted without having been read by the
state-level parties responsible. Now
that they’ve been examined by many more people nation-wide, including Education
professionals, psychologists, parents and many groups traditionally concerned
about the well-being of children, the level of concern has heightened
considerably.
This
isn’t just about the cost. I’m sure most
Americans would agree that if the Common Core was believed to be an improvement
in our schools’ curriculum and methods of delivery, no amount of money would be
too much. The problems most evident to
me and others, however, are that the materials, methods and even sequences of
instruction in both the Language Arts and Math Standards would be large steps
backward, and sometimes even counter-productive, just as we have been working
so hard to bring about improvements in academic achievement for all students.
The
number of articles, sites, and blogs, etc. addressing this issue have become
very numerous, so I have chosen just a few to send to you that I felt were
especially clear in explaining how these Standards could cause problems in the
future for our students. For Language
Arts, there are two videos – one showing examples of 1st Grade
Writing and Reading books and assignments, and the 2nd is a video of
a Psychologist explaining why curricula such as this is inappropriate for young
children. I’ve also included an article
by an Educator who very clearly explains why an over-reliance on informational
text can be damaging to the academic development of students of all ages. There is much written about the Math
Standards as they pertain to the higher grade levels, but the problems with the
Math goals begin much earlier than that. I’ve included a couple posts from my own blog
which examine the elementary level of the Common Core Standards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGph7QHzmo8
Common Core books for first, second and third grades, mainly.
A Clinical Mental
Health Therapist's opinion about Common Core materials she reviewed from the
video, above.
The
first post below is an article about what is going wrong with today’s math
teaching methods and material. The
second article answers the question, “Is Common Core going to fix this?”
(Blog Reader, please see "Invented Math & Common Core Elementary Math Standards posts))
In
light of these and so many other concerns and doubts as to the positive effect
of the Common Core Standards on our students, IVBE believes, should any
particular schools still decide to implement them, that parents with children
in those schools be given the choice as to whether they desire this or some
other curriculum. It would also be in
the best interests of the students that should the Common Core be seen to have
a detrimental effect on a student’s learning, that the parents of that child be
given the option to remove the student from the Common Core classroom. These conditions would have the added benefit
of giving teachers the choice of standards and methods as well. This way, we would be moving closer to
choices for parents, teachers, and schools instead of further away from choice,
which is another fly in the Common Core ointment.
Thank-you
for you consideration,
Katherine
Livermore, Secretary
Independent
Voices for Better Education
