It is also my understanding that the main problem is in early childhood education, that there were no experts in this particular area in the development of the standards and that the standards for the earlier ages are inappropriate according to most experts in the field.
I would like to see some recent information to support this position, because it was my understanding that there was a lot of backlash against the standards for K-2 when they were first introduced in March 2010, and that the standards were subsequently revised based on those (quite legitimate, IMO) concerns.
Specifically,
this criticism stated:
Such standards will lead to long hours of instruction in literacy and math. Young children learn best in active, hands-on ways and in the context of meaningful real-life experiences. New research shows that didactic instruction of discrete reading and math skills has already pushed play-based learning out of many kindergartens. But the current proposal goes well beyond most existing state standards in requiring, for example, that every kindergartner be able to write “all upper- and lowercase letters” and “read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.”
And if you look at the standards today, you can see that the K standards now say "Print
many upper- and lowercase letters," and "Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding," respectively. The quoted standards were moved to 1st grade, and the reading standard comes with the caveat that the material should be "grade level"... without defining what that means, so that's left to implementers to decide.
So far every criticism of early education in Common Core that I've seen, even those written fairly recently, refers directly or indirectly to that obsolete source.
