Kerry, very well-stated. I'd also add that (for whatever reason) administrators in some places, naturally inertia-driven creatures that they are, whined and moaned about CHANGE... and losing local "control" of curriculum...
and basically lit a grassfire, which largely caught on with the conspiracy-theorist crowd of parents and community members. {sigh}
Well, now that CCSS are a reality, they can't put it OUT. They thought to use parents to prevent it in the first place, but when that didn't work, now they just have a huge MESS on their hands, since public opinion is so very negative about the standards themselves at this point.
The rhetoric, a lot of it, has little to do with reality, and everything to do with foaming, but little difference in the end. ANY ills are going to get labeled as being the fault of Common Core at this point, and out goes both baby and bathwater.
I blame administrators-- at the state and local level-- who have always framed this as a power-struggle rather than much-needed educational reform. They knew that it was coming for years, but did nothing until they were FORCED to do so. Well, by that time it was a scramble. And yeah, the timing of the release of the standards themselves didn't help, because details were pretty sparse until rather late in the day, making turnkey solutions (e.g. whatever Pearson devised as "CC aligned!" ) more appealing than a full summer meticulously fine-combing extant curriculum and developing additions.
*****
When challenged with facts-- or asked to provide them, those arguments crumple, of course, but the anger behind them remains, along with the sense of "othering" the educational establishment.
It's all very sad.
Last edited by Mark Dlugosz; 06/15/14 02:10 PM. Reason: politics
