MARCH 2014
DOMESTIC
up exceedingly quickly with, according
to Bill Evers at Stanford University, an
abnormally short investigation process.
Now, states are beginning to implement a process that is, as critics like Director of the American Principles Project Emmett McGroarty put it, “reckless
in what it’s doing with children.” Such
claims are substantiated by the fact that
the philosophy behind the Common Core
is in many ways contrary to what current
child development research suggests is
appropriate, according to a joint statement signed by more than 500 early childhood experts. Moreover, authors of the
Common Core, eager to implement the
program before it became bogged down
in politics, left the curriculum untested
before its implementation of the national level, says Claudio Sanchez of NPR.
Concerns have also been raised about
the way in which the rigorous testing that
accompanies the Common Core is becoming a part of American classrooms.
The Common Core reminds the public
of the increased testing under No Child
Left Behind, much to many educators’
dismay. As North Carolina Superintendent Dr. Elease Frederic puts it: “You
teach, you test. You re-teach, you test.”
Performance-based standards have al-
ready been implemented in states across
the nation, without, according to NPR,
giving teachers the training or the time
to adapt to new procedures before being
evaluated. Worried parents and educators
recall the same argument used against
No Child Left Behind: national performance assessments give an ineffective
picture of achievement, but are still used
to rank schools and allocate funding.
What’s different about the Common
Core, though, is that it expects students
and teachers to adopt a completely new
curriculum and simultaneously improve
performance. Students themselves testify
to the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of meeting this expectation. Junior
Matthew O’Connell of Commack High
School in New York uses the metaphor
of a swimming pool: “The Common Core
can be likened to raising the water level
at a public pool…By raising the level,
schools systems already at a high standard…are provided with a way to challenge their students… Unfortunately,
this has also raised the water level for
schools that metaphorically could not
swim before its implementation, leaving both faculty and students to drown.”
Perhaps, though, dissatisfaction with
the Common Core