Veteran teacher Eileen Riley Hall has some advice for David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards.

Coleman famously said, in taped remarks at the New York State Education Department, that

 

“As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a (expletive) about what you feel or what you think.”

 

That remark, she says, typifies “all that is wrong with the soulless Common Core standards and its rigid, test-obsessed approach to education.”

 

They focus “myopically on intellectual skills theoretical children should have when they graduate from high school and then builds backward. However, a good teacher, like a good parent, begins by considering the needs of the real children in her classroom and builds forward. Children are not just walking brains, but bodies, hearts and souls as well. Contrary to Mr. Coleman’s crass assertion, our children’s thoughts and feelings should be the heart of our schools.”

 

She offers him a few lessons, based on her many years in the classroom:

 

“You don’t make kids smarter just by making school harder. If you’ve seen the convoluted Common Core elementary math lessons, you know this. Dictating one method of teaching doesn’t make sense, especially when that method complicates simple lessons, frustrating the majority of students. Schools should offer students a variety of ways to approach subjects, increasing opportunities for success.

However, the suffocating standardized tests demand one rigid methodology that does not allow teachers to tailor lessons to their students. Too often, students feel like failures when they are simply not developmentally ready for material or need a different strategy. Success is motivating; repeated failure is not. Build on children’s strengths; don’t hammer them with their weaknesses.”

 

A happy school is a productive school. “Children are in school for seven hours a day, five days a week, for 13 years. School, especially in the elementary years, should cultivate a child’s love of learning. Yet, the Common Core scorns all the creative endeavors (music, literature, art) that inspire students to imagine and dream. Instead of poetry, we now have technical reading. Imagination may not be quantifiable, but it keeps kids invested and ultimately yields far more impressive results than relentless test prep.”

 

What if all the millions now spent on new Common Core-aligned materials and consultants, new software and hardware for the testing, were spent instead to meet the needs of children? “Free lunch and breakfast programs; social workers and counselors; after-school, mentoring and tutoring programs; and smaller classes.”

 

If there had been any experienced classroom teachers on the committee that wrote the Common Core, these lessons might have been learned before they were written in stone and imposed on 46 states by the lure of Race to the Top gold. If the writing committee included as many teachers as testing experts, the Common Core would look very different and would not be facing massive pushback across the nation.