In a guest post for Jonathan Pelto’s blog, veteran educator Ann Policelli Cronin explains why the Common Core standards are a waste of time. For one thing, they were never tested on real students in real classroom, and no one can honestly say that they will prepare students for college or careers. That is sheer speculation or wishful thinking. What’s more, she writes, there is much in the Common Core ELA standards that is just plain wrong and/or incomprehensible.

The Common Core standards are also neither “high” nor “clear”. The Connecticut State Standards for English Language Arts are much more rigorous than the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and have a strong and deep research base that is totally lacking with the Common Core. The Common Core standards require a way of teaching students to read and to write that has long been discredited. Not only will the Common Core approach severely restrict students’ development as readers and writers, it will discourage students from even wanting to become readers and writers. The Common Core standards are definitely not rigorous, as teachers who have required rigor of their students know.

Standards that are rigorous encourage students to read and to write. They actively involve students in reading books that engage them and in writing poems, essays, narratives, plays, and speeches about ideas that are theirs alone. The author of the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, David Coleman, has said over and over at conferences, in interviews and in online presentations that students’ personal responses and interpretations have no place in the classroom nor does discussion of the cultural and historical context in which books are written or in which students live belong in that classroom. Also, as writers, the personal voice of students is not allowed and essays of personal interpretation and evaluation have been replaced with impersonal, formulaic essays that have nothing in common with real writing. Rigorous learning engages students with the big questions that great literature poses, encourages students to connect their own lives to those questions, and requires students to integrate the classroom discussions about those ideas so that they create new knowledge for themselves.

As for the Common Core standards being “clear”, they are not. There are 42 English Language Arts standards crammed with almost 200 different skills to be taught in each academic year. They are a mishmash of skills without a plan of developmental appropriateness and devoid of logic as to why some of them are in one grade and others in another grade. In a recent article in Education Week (September 23, 2014), Mike Schmoker reports that Gerald Graff, the former president of the professional organization of college English professors (Modern Language Association) said that most of the Common Core standards are unnecessary and nonsensical. For curriculum expert Robert Shepherd, the Common Core standards are “just another set of blithering, poorly thought-out abstractions.” Schmoker challenges any of us to make sense out of this 8th grade Common Core standard: “Analyze how the points of view of the characters and audience or reader (e.g. created through the use of dramatic irony) create effects like suspense or humor.”

She adds:

Not only are students receiving a poor education with the Common Core but the dropout rate will also increase. The Common Core aligned tests have the passing rate set at 30%; therefore, about 70% of the students in Connecticut will fail those tests. Since all standardized test scores correlate with family income, many children of poverty will fail. The way to break that correlation is not by testing and punishing students but by addressing the needs of those disadvantaged by poverty and racism. Feed the kids, give them eye exams, lower the class size so that that they get the adult conversation they crave, add personnel for extended learning experiences after school and in the summer. Standardize opportunities for learning.

Insisting upon real rigor for all Connecticut’s children and addressing the needs of children disadvantaged by poverty and racism – that is how Connecticut will be a state where people want to live, work, and invest in their future.

Despite the efforts of the Gates Foundation and others to treat the Common Core standards as an iron-clad document, as tablets chiseled in stone, which may be added to but never changed, the American Federation of Teachers has awarded grants to its affiliates in New York and Connecticut to review, and where necessary, rewrite the standards. The same thing could happen in every state where teachers have concluded that the CC standards are developmentally inappropriate, misaligned with the needs of children with disabilities, or suffer from other defects. This move on the part of the AFT both bolsters the chances of CC to survive and undercuts  its ability to be considered “national standards,” since teachers in every state will see different ways to revise them. Teachers will determine whether the standards need revision or whether the implementation was problematic. Let the revisions begin!

Here is the AFT announcement:
AFT Awards Grants for New York, Connecticut Teachers to Have Voice on Standards
WASHINGTON— The American Federation of Teachers announced today it has awarded AFT Innovation Fund grants for teachers in New York and Connecticut to offer solutions to problems with their state’s rollout of the Common Core State Standards.

The New York State United Teachers and AFT Connecticut were awarded the grants in a competition that was announced in July at the AFT convention.

“These grants are about giving educators some seed money to take their ideas about educational standards and convert them into practice. Many educators support higher standards but are concerned about particular aspects, especially the Common Core standards’ poor implementation and their developmental appropriateness, particularly in the early grades,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “We wanted to give the people closest to children a chance to do something different, as long as we were all focused on how to help students secure the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that the Common Core standards are supposed to be about.”

Along with the AFT, the judges were Bianca Tanis, an elementary school special education teacher in New York state and a co-founder of New York State Allies for Public Education; Jeanne Oakes, a presidential professor emeritus of education equity, University of California Los Angeles; and Kevin Welner, a professor in the school of education at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“The grant applicants had wide latitude, including critiquing the Common Core standards or writing new ones. It’s significant that the judges thought the best ideas primarily involved finding better ways to make the standards work for teachers and students,” Weingarten said.

NYSUT will use its six-month, $30,000 grant to make recommendations to address the state’s botched implementation of both the Common Core State Standards and assessments. A union task force will review and critique the state’s math and English language arts curriculum materials, developed by outside vendors, which have received a torrent of critical comments from teachers. These materials are seen as developmentally inappropriate, too prescriptive, and frequently riddled with errors and inconsistencies.

The task force also will scrutinize the state’s process for developing standardized tests; probe whether practitioners were involved in the local implementation of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards and development of curriculum; and consider whether the state’s professional development afforded teachers enough support.

“Given the profound problems with the state’s materials used for the initial Common Core rollout—units that weren’t developed with educators—we’re anxious to roll up our sleeves and get to work on a critique aimed at improving the materials and making sure they are developmentally appropriate for students,” said NYSUT President Karen E. Magee.

The task force’s critique will be shared with state policymakers; the state legislature; parent organizations; student advocates; and education professionals.

AFT Connecticut will address the unmet need for developmentally appropriate instructional strategies for students in the primary grades. The union’s working group will also make recommendations for teachers on how to help students with special needs and students with disabilities reach the standards.

“Teachers have not had enough time to fully understand the standards and develop curriculum, and it’s been especially difficult for teachers with special education students and English language learners,” said AFT Connecticut President Melodie Peters.

The resulting report will be shared with state policymakers and teachers who are anxious to receive Common Core guidance.

Both of the grants announced today also support the AFT’s July 2014 resolution on the Common Core State Standards, “The Role of Standards in Public Education.” Among its recommendations is a call for state-level boards made up of a majority of teachers to monitor standards and to use feedback from parents, educators and students to evaluate and continuously improve the system.

About the AFT Innovation Fund:
The AFT Innovation Fund makes grants to support bright ideas for improving education, health care and public services by state and local affiliates of the AFT. It is funded by the AFT and several national philanthropies.

NOTE: The Connecticut AFT received $25,000 for a six-month period. The New York State United Teachers received a $30,000 grant for a six-month period.