Mike Archer, a Florida teacher of English language arts, was one of the few teachers invited to participate in the initial review of the Common Core standards. Mike shared his story with Anthony Cody, who posted an interview with him here.
Archer says he had some input, managed to get a few things tweaked, but ultimately concluded that the Common Core would stifle creativity and teacher professionalism. As an active union member, he has called on both AFT and NEA to withdraw their support for Common Core.
Here are his major concerns:
“1. CCSS will perpetuate the overuse and misuse of high-stakes testing. This will worsen the current transition of schools into test-prep centers, narrowing the curriculum, robotizing lesson plans, creating unmotivated students, dampening discovery and wisdom. I believe learning should be fun, filled with interaction and collaboration, incentivizing lifelong self-improvement. Linking the standards to punitive testing puts the incentive on prep rather than personal enrichment.
2. In some districts, funds will be diverted away from needs such as labs, career training, arts, humanities, and varied college-prep electives. A well-rounded education will be more difficult to obtain, especially in those schools facing financial difficulties and poor evaluations based on test scores.
3. Inappropriate levels of regimentation may be imposed on our youngest students, special ed students and English language learners.
4. Data management will enable the transfer of personal student information, information that should remain family business, to private commercial interests.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When I was working in an American school overseas, the teachers would meet at prearranged dates once a year in different Asian countries for a series of workshops. One keynote speaker came up and spoke in glowing terms of their school. The Superintendent could look in on every class and know exactly what page was being studied every day in every subject. Parents could look online and get the same information. I was horrified at the thought of such regimentation. There is no class that can robotically follow such a curriculum and have any attachment to the needs of students.
What happens in the U.S. is also going to American schools overseas. The teachers used to be in the staff lounge laughing and enjoying teaching. After the excessive paperwork and unending meetings, the laughter stopped. All teachers, even those in their 30’s and 40’s looked as tired as I felt. There was, in ‘behind the door talk’, worry about student burnout.
Here’s NY Education Commissioner
John King behind-the scenes reacting
to people who attempt to opt out from
testing, or who complain about
Common Core:
When the Gates Foundation pays the AFT $4.4 million to advance the Common Core, the words of teachers like Archer will mean nothing to Randi Weingarten and her fellow-travellers.
The AFT and NEA leadership, to their long term term disgrace, have willfully taken on the role of co-implementing this plutocratic coup that is rapidly taking over the public schools.
They have essentially decided to become co-managers of teachers, rather than their trade union representatives.
Now that teachers are beginning to wake to the ugly realities of the Common Corporate Standards – testing as curriculum and teacher evaluation, regimentation based on fear and threats, monetization of students and their personal data, etc. – the leadership is pretending to be shocked that this is happening, and emitting distracting noises intended to pacify the membership.
Further blackening their legacy, they attacked brave Principals like Carol Burris and other school administrators who see what is happening and are trying to do something about it. The UFT could have reached out to the Principals union here in NYC, to try and protect Principals from reprisals for supporting efforts to stop this runaway train, but instead continues insisting on the benefits of the Gates Standards.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they? After all, they’ve received millions forr just that purpose.
It’s now time for teachers to wake up, and resist this vicious, soul-killing regime in whatever ways they can. One way to start is to revive the spirit of democracy in their unions, and throw the collaborators out.
I respect her contribution to our profession and believe her views are changing with new input from teachers across the country who are speaking out more than ever. I urge all NEA & AFT state & locals to view this film -> http://www.standardizedthefilm.org
Sorry, it’s http://www.standardizedthefilm.com
I respect her contribution to our profession and believe her views are changing with new input from teachers across the country who are speaking out more than ever. I urge all NEA & AFT state & locals to view this film -> http://www.standardizedthefilm.org
The people who put together the CCSS were not interested in vetting these. They were interested in getting their fait accompli rubber stamped.
Why the hurry?
Well, because the CCSS were not an attempt to improve U.S. education. They were an essential first step in a business plan.
A rather devious business plan. An extraordinary level of corruption.
So preposterous – that no one woud believe it until it was too late.
was NCLB an even earlier step in this plan, or was that just a lucky unintended consequence for pro-privatizers?
Joanna,
NCLB was not the beginning. It was the culmination of at least 20 years of hand-wringing about the schools while ignoring the economic and social conditions that affect academic performance. You should re-read “A Nation at Risk” and you won’t find any reference to those conditions and quite a lot of rhetoric about failure, threat, danger, etc. Yet here we are, thirty years later, the greatest nation in the world, hearing the same stale complaints about our schools, and still ignoring the root causes of poor school performance.
Diane, thank you.
I will reread it and I continue to have my nose in many other books.
So the sin is less an intentional going-after of public schools and more accurately a focus on the wrong issues (where going after public schools became a way to avoid asking the right questions, even if unintentionally). I get that. And that rule of thumb will help me stay focused.
This is why Dems signed NCLB so heartily, I suppose. . .they too had been hearing the Nation at Risk rhetoric for so long, without asking any questions. Same, too, with our Governor who signed us up for RttT (because of having been steeped in that rhetoric, and not just because the lure of Gates money was so hard to resist). I will say, it is easier to not remain angry at those who took us down this path and more focused on redirecting the conversation (which is more productive, actually) when we consider the seductive and/or blinding qualities A Nation At Risk fostered. That is to say, if they need a way to save face (or if we need one to be able to get beyond anger), then this is it. The Rhetoric started by A Nation at Risk masked the true issue of poverty in our nation and forced blame on our schools, the results of which we are still seeing and feeling today. When NCLB did not make poverty go away, they heaped it on the schools even more (RttT), thus masking the issue yet again, and this time actually hurting public schools to the possible point of wiping them out.
Makes sense.
What is so frightening is that the Common Core ignores Common Sense.
I am grateful for his honesty.
Reblogged this on My [redacted] Journey.
Unfortunately the concept of one size fitting all leaves the twenty percent out in the cold. We expect certain things learned but do not take into account that certain people learn differently and some interpret the information at different levels. How many graduates from a New York City school would understand how to plant a field. Yet that is a vital necessary task concept out west. How many computer techs are needed when it is time to harvest the wheat? To each man and woman there are tasks given and some will meet the criteria and some will fall short and meet a different criteria. Not all are the same. Picasso was bad at math and Einstein could not paint a picture.