Is Common Core Killing Kindergarten?

By dianeravitch

June 13, 2015 //

The Boston Globe has a good article describing the debate about the developmental appropriateness of the Common Core.

Articles like this are important for educating the public

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Common Core

33 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Gordon Wilder says:

June 13, 2015 at 2:03 pm

Not just killing kindergarten.

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joan says:

June 13, 2015 at 2:58 pm

It has already killed it. NO more play house, no more block corner, no more finger paint.
No more ‘everything I need to know about life I learned in kindergarten’.

My grandson received a notebook binder and was forced to write columns of words–present tense and past tense.
Luckily he could, but half the class doesn’t know their letters.

Why are we punishing little children?
Why are politicians and school boards sacrificing children for corporate greed?

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sloan96 says:

June 13, 2015 at 2:58 pm

Standards are only goals???? What a load of BS! My child was held back in kindergarten for not meeting these “goals”

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- Threatened out West says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 3:06 pm
  
  Wow. That’s one of the most horrifying statements I have ever read. Who does that to a five or six year old?
  
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- MathVale says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 3:24 pm
  
  At my son’s parochial school they wanted to “fail” him and repeat kindergarten. He was already older than his classmates. After a long meeting with the principal, she finally admitted they could not and did not want to teach him. We left the school and I haven’t been to church since.
  
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  - Mary DeFalco says:
    
    June 14, 2015 at 2:10 pm
    
    Retention: “most harmful tool in the arsenal of educators.”
    
    Retention is so destructive with lasting reprecussions!!!
    
    There is an alternative to retaining and social promotion:
    Give the At Risk student double instruction in reading from day one with a reading specialist working in tandem with the classroom teacher.The reading specialist should use a reading program anchored in Mary Clay’s philosophy and methodology- Constructivist approach.
    
    Do not waste time drilling and memorizing phonetic elements in isolation.
    
    Stop all this harmful Standardized testing and use that money to pay for reading specialists.
    
    More discussion on retention can be found on:
    http://maryidefalco.com/reading%20site%20reconnected/reading__language_arts_primary_teachers_2/30k._CC_Retention_Third_Grade_Mandatory_Reteniton.html
    
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drext727 says:

June 13, 2015 at 2:58 pm

Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.

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Linda Johnson says:

June 13, 2015 at 3:09 pm

Children used to love kindergarten so much that many remembered the thrill of the blocks and the playhouse well into old age. It was there that so many children learned to enjoy learning.

Now if you ask a kindergarten student if he likes school, you’ll likely get “It’s too hard” or “No” for a response. What a travesty!

For many years the United States ranked first in academic and nonacademic pursuits. Now we’ll likely see achievement among adults decline. When this happens, will we blame “the unions?”

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- MathVale says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 3:20 pm
  
  The blame the teachers argument is a straw man so politicians can avoid accountability for their own incompetence. Witness Congress. Besides, labor has not held political power since Reagan.
  
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  - John says:
    
    June 13, 2015 at 7:03 pm
    
    I suspect accountability is merely a political substitute for adequate funding.
    
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MathVale says:

June 13, 2015 at 3:16 pm

Don’t stop there. One of my relatives teaches early childhood education and is now required to keep academic, standards based metrics on 3-5 year olds. Gone is circle time and play. My relative is an excellent teacher, but the latest reformy mandate is demoralizing.

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- Used to love NY says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 6:04 pm
  
  I have a friend who does Head Start…her “class” is birth to 14 months and she has to write lesson plans and kids have to meet “benchmarks”….got to be college and career ready from the womb.
  
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Marie Kielty, Early Childhood consultant says:

June 13, 2015 at 3:28 pm

Excellent article! Thirty years ago we in Early Childhood were dealing with the same issues. That was how Developmentally Appropriate Practice by NAEYC began.
I remember it well. . Children who were in didactic teaching classrooms showed three times the number of felony arrests by their mid twenties as children in other programs. Read the research from High Scope Educational Foundation in Ypsilanti, Michigan.It was published in 1995. Children are missing the opportunity to learn the social skills which are crucial at this age.

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- Margie says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 5:00 pm
  
  Sadly, the NAEYC has not come out and taken a strong stand against the developmental inappropriateness of expecting every child in a grade to be at the highest end of a skill continuum to be considered “proficient” . Thank goodness Defending the Early Years is continuing that fight.
  
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Margie says:

June 13, 2015 at 4:02 pm

“The first report singled out the expectation that kindergartners should be able to ‘read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.'” The operative word in this standard is “read”, which CCSS places under “fluency”.

While many kg kids are emergent “readers” they are not “reading” fluently-in fact they are not really “reading”.

Here is a link to a chart that describes the typical progression of stages of learning to read: https://www.siue.edu/education/readready/1_Literacy/1_SubPages/1_ld_emergent.htm

If it is safe to assume since the CCSS writers named “emergent reader texts” they were talking about the skill being expected for “emergent readers” let’s look at one item that chart cites as an emergent reader behavior:

“Attempt to read independently, sometimes relying on their memories, the illustrations, and their background experiences to reread the story”. Many kg. teachers would agree with that being a typical pre-reading behavior for many 5-6 year olds. However, that is NOT what the standard calls for, and that is not what children are actually being assessed on. Kudos to DEY for calling the CCSS apologists out.

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SomeDAM Poet says:

June 13, 2015 at 4:05 pm

“Wrong to the Core”

Eliminate the Common Core
For kindergarten kids?
I’ll tell you what is now in store
With such a plan as this:

The kids will not read close
Or even read at all!
Instead they’ll prolly post
Their drawings on the wall!

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retired teacher says:

June 13, 2015 at 4:41 pm

Parents and teachers would be much better off reading to young children than trying to teach them to read at a early age. Reading to children develops vocabulary and language as well as thinking skills. Playing with language and reading poetry and songs help children develop rhyming which does contribute to a foundation for literacy. Child development occurs in spurts and is not linear. It is counter productive and may be harmful to try to force young children to read before they are ready. I have two grown children. One read in kindergarten, and the other did not. They are both intelligent and were good students that completed college. Young children should be learning through their senses, and they will be able to deal with the abstract when they are ready.

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Laura H. Chapman says:

June 13, 2015 at 4:55 pm

THE BIG LIE “The United States is falling behind other countries in the resource that matters most in the new global economy: human capital,” declared a 2008 report from the National Governors Association. Creating a common set of “internationally benchmarked” standards was seen as the best way to close the persistent achievement gaps between students of different races and between rich and poor school districts.”

THE BIG LIE I have found only two international benchmarking documents in the early history of the Common Core. The first was in 1998 with comparisons of standards in two states and the math and science standards in Japan and standards available from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS). The second report in 2008. titled “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education,” was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates and GE Foundations. The author was a professional writer of reports. The advisory committee included seven governors or former governors, CEOs at Intel and Microsoft, three senior state and large metro area education officials, three advocates for minority groups, one foundation, and five university faculty, only two of these scholars in education. The most important source of information was the data analytics expert at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). In this report, benchmarking is little more than a process of: (a) identifying the nations that score high on international tests, then (b) assuming the scores reflect higher expectations, and then (c) looking at some economic descriptors for those countries.

The result is a set of dubious inferences– high test scores and high standards are predicates for economic prosperity. Dubious should be written DUBIOUS, especially because this publication was rolled out with great fanfare in the midst of the 2008 crash of the world economy…for reasons that have no bearing on international test scores, no bearing on educational standards, no bearing on the nation’s children and teachers and public schools.

Nevertheless, “The executive summary (p.6) calls for the following:
Action 1: Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive.

This is a very big lie. It is a dangerously misleading one when tossed into a discussion of kindergarten. There is no way to internationally benchmark standards or tests for every grade or subject because the meaning of “internationally benchmarked” is limited to test scores on international tests in at most three subjects, no international tests yet in kindergarten.

On top of those insistent misrepresentations from the nation’s governors and those involved in the whole Common Core Experiment to save the economy is it not strange that we find no demand at all for more and better knowledge of geography, cultural history including the arts, political history, and world languages–all of which might actually bear on functioning with savvy and grace on an international stage?

If the only or the prime value of our nation’s children and youth is economic, we are back to the same wretched outlook on children as that which existed before child labor laws. The Governors are still using this appalling rhetoric, treating the nation’s children and youth as more or less useful and productive for the economy. The same for their teachers. What will it take to get a reversal of this narrow and attitude that “It is perfectly OK to think of kids as economically worthless, or worthwhile, or somewhere in between?

The real causes of the so-called achievement gap are the result of thinking that test scores are objective…when they are not. It is the result of thinking that humans should all be thoroughly standardized to perform in the same way, at the same time, to the same level on a set of test questions that only predict scores on other tests. And those tests and scores are the marketing tools of choice for the unregulated testing industry.

Test scores have been a major weapon in the arsenal of federal and state policies designed to produce, reproduce, and not to reduce the huge disparities in income and opportunities in this nation and to distract attention from real fraud and abuse. Children are not responsible for the fate of the economy. They did not tank the economy in 2008. Nor did their teachers.

This nation is in desperate need for more ample education and for more generous views of humanity than has come from the National Governor’s Association, the Secretary of Education, corporate leaders, billionaires, and the press. The press has become too lazy. This piece about kindergarten does little more than recycle talking points from easy to find and ready-made sources.

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Steve says:

June 13, 2015 at 5:58 pm

The “Big Lie” technique was from Hitler. Tell a lie, no matter how outrageous, and the more you tell it, the more people believe it. Yes they are good at using Third Reich propaganda techniques, but so is any good ad man. Here is another Hitler quote, “How good it is for those in government that the people don’t think.” If that worked in Germany (with a much more intelligent population in the 1920s, it will work 100 times better with this dumb population we have in 2015. In other words, get ready for the wholesale privatization of education. It does no good to speak “truth to power” now. There aren’t enough people listening. People are very distracted with tech toys and 200 channels. Just go start an organic farm somewhere and wait 50 years until it changes again. I am very happy on the hermit path myself. Your passion is admirable, Laura, but I guess you aren’t a billionaire and have no power. Don’t get a heart attack over things you can’t control. No one cares what the “truth” is. You can’t counter all that expensive propaganda.

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ECE Teacher NY says:

June 13, 2015 at 7:07 pm

Diane, have you looked at the EngageNY module curriculum for Kindergarten?? And the videos. Not a block or water table in sight, just children seated at desks mimicking the teachers lesson. Saddest thing I have seen in a classroom, yet it is now what NYS constitutes as best practice. https://www.engageny.org/resource/grade-k-math-counting-kcc2-kcc5kcc4a-kcc4b

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- Christine Langhoff says:
  
  June 13, 2015 at 11:51 pm
  
  This is simply awful. The kids can’t count, they have merely memorized a sequence of counting words. When poor beleaguered Teacher Melanie (who seems to be being observed by 2 or 3 people) scolds kids for guessing, I just about lost it. “Do we guess at school?” while shaking her head “Or do we think and learn?”
  
  Children as parrots, or as trained animal performers. Let’s have them paw the ground with their hooves for a sugar cube, already.
  
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  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    June 15, 2015 at 11:02 am
    
    Reminiscent of Clever Hans, who was actually smarter than his handler (albeit in a different way).
    
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Alabama teacher says:

June 14, 2015 at 12:06 am

Common Core is rough on 1st graders, too. The curriculum has changed but child development has not.

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AlwaysLearning says:

June 14, 2015 at 7:58 am

Laura—–I totally agree with this statement–“It is the result of thinking that humans should all be thoroughly standardized to perform in the same way, at the same time, to the same level on a set of test questions that only predict scores on other tests. And those tests and scores are the marketing tools of choice for the unregulated testing industry.”

Here is what I found is flawed in that whole process,” The Pacing of the Curriculum and the learning needs of individual students may not be aligned with the timing of the common assessments, limiting the usefulness of the data that result.” So, if it is all about the DATA, the data may not be very useful anyway.
We should be focusing on instruction NOT assessment.

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Margie says:

June 14, 2015 at 9:53 am

Speaking of the NAEYC,(which CCSS mouthpieces are now citing as allies ) wrote a paper on the “developmentally appropriateness” which conveniently only cites the standards where kg teachers can give “support”. As N.C-P points out in this article, the omission of such words such as “teacher prompting and support” clearly show the intent is for kg kids to in fact read independently for “purpose and understanding”.

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GE2L2R says:

June 14, 2015 at 10:26 am

The New York Times ran this article on June 9th dealing with the necessity of play in kindergarten.

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Akademos says:

June 14, 2015 at 10:31 am

Did you see this? Will Bill Gates Admit He Made A Mistake Backing Common Core? Or should we Control-Alt-Delete Common Core?

http://www.onenewsnow.com/education/2015/06/12/will-gates-admit-mistake-supporting-common-core

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Michael Fiorillo says:

June 14, 2015 at 10:31 am

Kindergarten? Nein. Kinderfabrik? Ja.

Children’s garden? No. Children’s factory? Yes.

The so-called reformers are not only doing their utmost to steal teacher’s dignity and professional autonomy (and their school budgets and pensions), but are looking to steal childhood itself, in service of their infinite greed, opportunism and will to power.

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Susan Ochshorn says:

June 14, 2015 at 12:18 pm

We need to keep speaking truth to those who would deny it, and take back this conversation from those who know nothing about how young children develop. We are making some headway in the mainstream media (as Chris Berdik’s piece attests), but we still have miles to go before we sleep. http://ecepolicyworks.com/renaissance-in-the-kindergarten-not-yet-motoko-rich/

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Mary DeFalco says:

June 14, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Is Common Core Killing Kindergarten?

How timely! Just this Friday I attended a kindergarten graduation of my grandson. Two classes joined in presenting a delightful program filled with music, action, and pride. However, the tone among the people before and after the performance was of anger, frustration, and disbelief when Common Core was mentioned. The night before the parents were informed of standards for first grade. “Common Core is making my children hate school; they don’t want to go!” said one angry woman.

I consistently receive very negative reactions when I mention CCSS to strangers- parents, grandparents, and caregivers. Most teachers are afraid to voice their concern. What is striking to me is that so many parents in various districts have autistic children. Are children being labeled autistic so they won’t be retained? Or is the CC Standards causing the problem? All the parents speak with horror about all the homework that is found in their children’s backpacks.

I maintain that there should be no homework in kindergarten. Parents need time to read to their children. Precious time shouldn’t be taken away to complete incomprehensible meaningless homework.

To expect young children to cope with material that is too difficult is poor teaching and will cause a student to regress and worse can cause a disability say nothing about squelching the desire to read and learn. I learned early on that children learn to read more quickly with easy material in lieu of challenging material. Years of working with At Risk children told me that primary children including second and third graders should not struggle; should not be forced to try and read on a frustration level. Students will regress if they are forced to read on a level that is too difficult for them. David Eskey & William Grabe maintain that there are 3 constants in developing the skill of reading: appropriate material, quantity of reading, and teacher’s judgement. CC has none of these constants. Since Pearson Co. anchored in England bought up the major book companies, they control the material going into the schools. Teacher’s have to use CC guide lines – personal judgement can’t play a part in decisions.

Being able to regurgitate information will be of no use to the students if he/she can’t relate to the information in some way. Furthermore, some people/children have phenomenal memories but others do not. Just like actors on stage need props/cues to help them remember their lines, so do children need cues to retrieve information. Relating stories to the students and their background is like using mnemonics not only to help them retrieve information but more importantly to help them construct meaning and apply the information. CC Standards, however, are drill, memorize, and regurgitate.

Reading First, a program at the core of the No Child Left Behind Law, has not made greater progress in understanding what they read than have peers outside the program, according to a congressionally mandated study- a program based on Reid Lyon’s phonetic approach. A study of the $6 billion dollar Reading First program found it failing. Study of Reading Program Finds a Lack of Progress.

Yet, this flaws program is what Common Core has mandated. The homework my grandson brought home in pre k and in kindergarten begins the memorization process. Even though parents are told that CC first starts in third, the worksheets and workbooks are from Pearson Company which supports CC.

Phonics is only one aspect of a successful three-pronged, interactive reading approach to reading. The CC Standards do not address the three-pronged cueing system – semantics, syntax, and graphophonics- which supports the active learners, engaging all their senses, interacting with the text and responding to the text. We must begin with the child’s prior knowledge and end with the child. CC uses the “bottom up” approach of phonics. Background knowledge is not developed nor utilized. Children who have an auditory discrimination problem can’t learn via the phonetic approach! So they are punished by retaining them. How cruel!!!!!!! They certainly do not need such asinine books anchored in phonics such as “The fat cat sat on a mat.” They need books that they can relate to and that capture their attention. I am one who could not learn via phonics and taught myself to read in eighth grade.

Kulkarni states, “A lot of students, often from disadvantaged backgrounds and struggling schools, aren’t getting what they need early on to get them reading proficiently by third grade.”
The biggest variable is that for adults to regularly read to children.

He doesn’t address one of the major issues hindering progress- the “one size fits all” mentality. No program is going to bring all children including the learning disabled, those with emotional and physical problems- on par with the students who were ahead before they began for obvious reasons. Some people will never be able to run a 4-min. mile or to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. However, educators must work with the child at his instructional level, where children feel safe enough to learn with all the mistakes that are part of learning, where they can achieve and feel good about themselves. This will not happen to children who are held under the burden of CC and its aligned testing. What children really need begins at birth when the mother begins to read to her child. You don’t have to be rich to read every night to your child.

Marilyn Adams states,“Children’s first grade reading achievement depends most of all on how much they know about reading before they get to school… The differences in reading potential are shown not to be strongly related to poverty, handedness, dialect, gender, IQ, mental age, or any other such difficult-to-alter circumstances. They are due instead to learning and experience – and specifically to learning and experience with print and print concepts.” Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print, 494pp
“Thorndike, after studying reading comprehension in 15 countries, discovered two conditions that prevailed in strong readers. All had been read to from an early age and had come from homes that respected education.” Rdg. Teacher March 1989

Many aspects of life influence a child’s future success. The most important influence is reading to children.
“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.”
Commission on Reading in a Nation of Readers

Dr.Carmelita Williams former president of the NRA stated,
“You do not have to read every night – just on the nights you eat.”

Reading to children is the one variable that I have observed that has the greatest influence a child’s life. Experiences are necessary but being read to is crucial. Each of my children read to their children every night. Some read in a dramatic way- great animation; they talk about the story and they relate the story to their children. My one daughter started reading to her children at birth. The sounds and rhythm were very soothing. I see in my own children and grandchildren the benefits of having been read to each night starting at infancy. The reading supports writing all language arts skills.

How well I remember when the Ben Carson story came out. I used his story to inspire and motivate my students.
Ben Carson, M.D. was an inner-city kid who at the age of 11 was failing in school. His mother began requiring him and his brother to read two books a week and write book reports. The boys did not know their mother could not read their reports; she only went to second grade. Ben Carson became director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

My motto: where there is a will there is a way. The public libraries are gold mines. If parents can’t read, there are read along tapes and CDs. When I taught, I sent back packs home with books for the week. Children could choose what book they wanted to read to their caregivers and what books they wanted the caregivers read to their children. Every back pack had read- along-stories – books accompanied with tapes or CDs. If the caregivers didn’t have a recording device I would supply a tape reorder. Sure I lost a few bags but the benefits out weighed the loss. One fifth grader’s mother told me that she was learning to read English by following along with her son. It wasn’t unusual for my At Risk children to make two years growth in one year.

Kulkarni who supports CC asks, “IF THE STANDARDS aren’t about mastery, then why have them?” Kulkarni says it’s about equity. “The idea of a standard is that every class should strive for this. Every student deserves this,” he says.

However, the opening paragraph of the Common Core Standards for ELA, “One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school.”
The word must continues to be used in the first paragraph. It does not read that the students should aim… It reads that the students must…

Besides ELA there are CC Math Standards. “Kamii notes that the foundation of math is the ability to think abstractly about numbers.”
Dewey and Jerome Bruner state you can teach young children but it had to be experiential.

Furthermore, thinking abstractly begins with developing the imagination which Common Core ignores. Common Core introduces text with the drill of sounds, letters, abstract definition of new vocabulary and then repeat and repeat until the text is practically memorized – that is not reading. Crucial background knowledge is ignored. The Pre K – four year old-curriculum- includes the study of the alphabet: recognizing the visual and auditory plus writing the letters and words – so inappropriate for Pre-K. Dr. David Elkind a Ph.D in Child Development- warned us of this in his Hurried Child book.

Dr. Elkind maintained, “In too many schools kindergartens (Now pre-k!!!) have now become “one-size-smaller” first grades, and children are tested, taught with workbooks, given homework, and take home a report card. The result of this educational hurrying is that from 10 to 20 percent of kindergarten children are being “retained” or put in “transition” classes to prepare them for the academic rigors of first grade! …Many of our schools reflect the contemporary bias toward having children grow up fast. They do this because such schools have become increasingly industrialized and product oriented.”
“Hurrying children into adulthood violates the sanctity of life by giving one period priority over another. But if we really value human life, we will value each period equally and give unto each stage of life what is appropriate to that stage….In the end, a childhood is the most basic human right of children.”

James Coleman did an intensive study across the states for the government which revealed that the most important variable in school achievement was the family. (James Coleman, 1966, 1975)
Goodlad’s “Study of Schooling” beginning in 1981, also very intensive and extensive study, involved over 27,000 people. Goodlad’s commission looked at data within schools and they discovered that within the same building some classrooms achieved better than others they compared them to. The reason these children did better when they all came from poverty was “good teaching.”

Through years of teaching experience and watching my own children and grandchildren, I, too, come to the realization that reading to children is the most important variable predicting the future success of children. When my children and now their children reached the age of two, they began picture reading- beginning stage if reading. Independently, off on their own, they would find a book and turned the pages of a book they loved. As they recognized objects in the picture, they pointed to the objecta and call their names. At a young age they have their favorites they want read over and over.

There are many fantastic children’s authors and illustrators who spark interests as well as tickle the funny bone which children need to be meet. These authors will develop the skills of reading and writing – not the inane, contrived phonetic controlled books which
children are expected to learn from. Yes, Common Core is killing kindergarteners.

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Linda says:

June 15, 2015 at 1:06 pm

Mary Defalco,
Thank you for writing your comment.

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Liz Gray says:

March 23, 2016 at 12:35 am

The Common Core disaster started when my son was in 1st grade. By 3rd grade, I knew without a doubt, it was a disaster. I have a very active boy, who met most of his developmental milestones later than his siblings, and he repeated kindergarten because of these delays and borderline birthday.

I had my reservations about CC, but his final year (3rd grade)in public school sealed the deal. He had terrific teachers; I used to work with most of them. Their hands are TIED. CC fails to realize that CHILDREN ARE INDIVIDUALS. It’s no more fair to label a child for not mastering the “standards” then it is to condemn the teacher for not teaching them correctly.

NEWS FLASH: Children are gifted UNIQUELY in different areas, and yes, some kids are developmentally delayed. Others have erratic and/or unstable home life and/or parents that are not involved.

Teachers have to plan at class/grade/school/and federal levels. They have to document ad nauseum every standard met or not met for every subject for every kid. They have to meet and discuss this w/parents and then meet and discuss w/administrators for the kids that aren’t meeting standards.

Some kids do all their homework and have hovercraft parents to ensure they do. Others NEVER come to conferences and don’t view education as their responsibility, only the state’s (teachers). Another words, UNIQUE kids come from UNIQUE backgrounds.

Likewise, teachers also are uniquely gifted in their teaching. With my prior children, I always felt like the teachers were able to adequately cater their instruction for the developmental and academic level my kid was actually at. Now it’s all thrown out there in more multiple ways to learn (esp. math) then they are developmentally ready for. They just get confused and then when you put all the standards in a blender, (i.e.standardized testing), and ask them to recall everything perfectly, many kids tank. (Look how far school scores have fallen last three years!)

Is testing the only way we measure a year’s worth of progress for a child? Does one bad test mean a child didn’t grow in multiple areas all year? Does one bad test mean the teacher did not cover it? Does one good test prove a child absolutely knows it? My son passed his EOG last year (though half the class did not) and I know for a fact, some of it was, well…..luck. After all, according to mandated testing, picking A, B, C, or D yields a 1 in 4 probability that they “mastered” the concept, no?

We don’t need federal bureaucrats deciding what skill MUST be learned this year and if not regurgitated correctly on a test, with a result that yields somehow a child doesn’t measure up. I took my kid out of school this year and am homeschooling. He is off all meds for ADHD. He hated the meds, lost a bunch of weight (that he can’t afford to lose) and was a zombie last year. Now he is with me. He is happy, thriving, and we have done more in 1 year quantity and quality wise, then he did in 3 at his elementary school. Now he is being challenged AND having fun and a sense of control of his own learning. If you hate CC, I highly recommend home schooling. Best decision I ever made and much easier than I thought.

Common Core is a Common Disaster…it’s the CAUSE of so many people fleeing the public schools. Restore Common Sense and let the local teachers, parents, and school officials have the highest percent of input on what should be taught. Above all, be an advocate for YOUR child, and trust your INTUITION. Do what works for your child and be involved. The ultimate teaching responsibility is yours. Lots of great websites and workbooks are on line. And there’s learning opportunities everywhere you go in life.

Especially at the earliest ages, it would be great if children were encouraged to pursue learning in unique and creative ways. The LOVE OF LEARNING is so much more important than any “required benchmark at this specific age.”

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V says:

April 23, 2016 at 11:52 am

RETENTION is hard….BUT THE COMMON CORE IS WORSE!!!!
I am a teacher and parent…and I have never seen children hating school and crying so much as in the last 3 years!!!!
Yes…for about 2 students, it’s fine ( but good teachers would normally progress them ), but as for the other 20 “typical” children….their put in “special classes” or “help”!
So their taught already….YOU CANT DO IT!
They are no longer cuddled and encouraged….teachers have to push and stress them because of their own SGO’s, deadlines and “data driven instruction” that KILLS any creativity or happiness!!!
Students are NOT allowed to color outside the lines!!! Teachers are told it’s sloppy and inappropriate!!!!!
Please parents!!!!!! READ AND UNDERSTAND, the teachers are not at fault….they are actually written up if their caught going against this!!!!
But….this has to be stopped and return our children to being happy!!!!

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