Whatever the strengths of the Common Core standards for the upper grades, they have received very negative reviews from educators experienced with very young children.
This teacher explains why the Common Core standards are startlingly indifferent to basic principles of child development.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In the eyes of so-called education reformers, Other People’s Children are just miniature worker/debtor bees, in training for their future highly surveilled, over-worked, over-stressed, under-paid, at-will and pension-less jobs.
The entire concept of the “Children’s Garden” for anyone’s children but their own and their fellow Masters of the Universe is to be eliminated, with the institutional memory of it purged by high stakes exams and evaluation check lists.
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Wow, Michael. Powerfully said.
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If there is a strength in the standards in the upper grades, it lies not in the standards themselves but in the companion document called Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core state Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3-13, and definitely NOT in the standards themselves, which are mediocre at their best and dangerous at their worst. At the lower grades, the standards are an utter failure.
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We would be well served to chuck the standards [sic] while retaining the sound principles enumerated in the Publishers’ Criteria. The Publishers’ criteria show that the standards authors meant well. But the road to hell is paved with the good intentions of people who hadn’t the necessary expertise for the job they were doing.
I think I’m going to make a habit of using the [sic] any time I mention these new standards [sic].
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Why do some people learn about Piaget’s developmental stages and Maslow’s hierarchy in college, then forget about them when the knowledge is needed the most?
I know that the people I work with have the best interests of their students in mind. I’m pretty sure that the politicians and decision makers who tell us how to teach kids don’t.
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I can almost understand forgetting what they learned – but they did NOT learn it (I can’t imagine Arne Duncan’s sociology degree covering it in great detail) in the first place.
What galls me is that when working on education for the early grades, Early Childhood experts and educators weren’t even consulted.
I can see not-knowing. But when you KNOW you don’t know, you call in people who DO know.
I had to only skim the linked article because I see that reality every time I go into schools and my heart hurts for the little people. I cry so many tears for them because there is only so much I can do: I can hug them (although that’s being outlawed now too :P), I can sympathize with them, but I cannot overcome the effects of their dysfunctional home lives or make their brains mature any faster by stuffing more developmentally-inappropriate [stuff] into them. *cry* We are LOSING these children ans I fear we won’t get them back…. not until we see them in the juvenile court system in the next 5-10 years or as teen mothers with another generation unable to escape given a ladder with rungs too far apart for them to use to climb out. 😦
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Yes, the damage that is and will be done is incalculable. A friend who is a primary school teacher recently said to me, “Well, we have a month and a half of school left, but the year is, for all intents and purposes, over because the kids are doing nothing but testing from here on.” Little kids. Kids on all kinds of different schedules developmentally. Nothing but testing from here on. What a way to instill in them a love of learning!!! It’s tragic.
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The term “developmentally appropriate practices” was pretty much banned at our staff meetings, in an elementary school, no less. We keep trying to pour more information into these little kid’s heads. They’ll all burn out from education by the time they hit high school, if not sooner.
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So tragic. So infuriating. So unjust. Developmentally appropriate practice IS the true standard by which all work with young children should be judged.
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Some administrators feel that DAP are a cop-out, an excuse for teachers to not demand more from their students. If it it takes me twice the amount of time for a second-grader to understand a concept half as well as a fourth-grader, doesn’t it stand to reason that maybe that concept is better taught in fourth grade? The stuff I gave to teach seven year-olds astounds me. And the quizzical looks on their faces tell me it astounds them, too!
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Your prediction of burn out is correct, in my opinion. By ignoring DAP, education becomes an exercise in frustration and failure for so many children. I guess that’s what they mean by raising the bar. If you raise it high enough the majority will smack themselves in the face and never make it over. Is this what they want?
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The more I read the more I believe that the Common Core Standards is an un-American social experiment that will have an irreparable impact on our nation’s children.
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The CCSS are really not too strong in the upper grades, either. Particularly when students were dropped into the middle of the standards with no preparation. It’s a mess.
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Please watch this:
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I am thrilled to see that we have post that attacks Common Core for the right reasons. This is a real legitimate critique of the CCSS. Of course, adding fractions is not really brand new material for 5th graders and that is definitely part of the Common Core. That vocabulary list is just an example of leaders that are developing inappropriate curriculum. The Common Core is not perfect but I think that on balance it is good for kids. I hope that people listen to teacher input on the standards. The tests, textbooks, and high stakes are guaranteed to be awful but right now, teacher leaders have a small window of opportunity to have some measure of control over what gets done with the Common Core. We shouldn’t waste it by losing focus. We want input, age-appropriateness, materials that make sense and TIME!!!!!
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At the early grades, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics relied heavily on the National Research Council’s (NRC) report, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity (see http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12519 ). The NRC has a stringent review process for such consensus reports, and there is good evidence that young children very definitely are capable of learning the ideas in the standards when they are taught from a strong curriculum with teachers who know the math and how to teach it. This is *not* about boring worksheets and drills, but about playful, engaged learning.
At the upper elementary/middle grades, the math standards are quite close to those found in mathematically high-performing East Asian countries. Yes, we have much work to do to successfully implement these standards, and we have systemic obstacles. But our children are no less capable than children in these countries. Don’t we want a world-class vision for what our children should understand mathematically?
Anyone who teaches math (at any level) and is interested in discussing Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, or any other issues of math teaching, is invited to the Mathematics Teaching Community, https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu
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