Peter Rawitsch is a first-grade teacher in New York. He is a National Board Certified Teacher. He has been trying to teach his class the Common Core standards for nearly three years. He has concluded that they are a nightmare. He wrote this opinion piece in the Albany Times Union:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Depending on the day, my six and seven year old children might answer: “soccer player,” “princess,” or “veterinarian.” Sadly, most of them will have to put their dreams on hold because they’re too busy working on someone else’s dream of them becoming “college and career ready.” I think it’s a nightmare.

Six and seven year old children are active learners. They use all of their senses to learn in a variety of ways. Each child learns at their own pace. Play is their work. Using materials they can manipulate helps them think about how things work, use their imagination, and solve problems. They construct knowledge through their experiences.

As a 1st grade teacher with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, National Board Certification in Early Childhood, and 37 years of classroom experience, I’m deeply troubled by what is being demanded of our young learners.

For the past 2½ years I have been trying to help the children in my classroom become proficient in the 1st grade Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Because the children are at different places in their development, some have been successful with the new standards, but for too many, these new expectations are inappropriate and unfair. They’re being asked to master material they simply aren’t ready to do yet. Among the flaws of the CCSS is the assumption that all students in a given grade are capable of learning all of the same grade level standards by the end of a school year. But many of the current 1st grade standards were, just a few years ago, skills that 2nd grade students worked on.

The Gesell Institute of Child Development has studied the cognitive development of children three to six years of age since 1925. In 2010 it reported that young children “are still reaching developmental milestones in the same timeframe,” meaning, that while the learning standards have changed, the way children learn has not.

He points out that those who wrote the Common Core standards included no one experienced or expert in the teaching of the youngest learners. No one on the New York Board of Regents that adopted the Common Core had experience with teaching young children. The Common Core standards are inappropriate for young children.

He concludes that it is time for parents to take action. Learn about what your children do in school. Talk to their teacher. Find out what activities have been replaced by sitting and bubbling in answers and busywork.

How much more sitting are the children doing for reading and writing activities? How have additional paper and pencil tests affected when and how things are taught? Which activities and experiences that once enriched the school day and fostered a love of learning have been pushed out? Teachers need to talk about child development and appropriate academic standards at School Board and PTA meetings. Together we need to speak up and advocate for an education that celebrates and honors our young learners. Our children’s dreams matter.

Try this link:

http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Advocate-for-young-learners-6109146.php

Susan Ochshorn read Robert Pondiscio’s post “Is Common Core Too Hard for Kindergarten?” (he thinks not), and she felt impelled to respond, even though she is on vacation. Ochshorn is the founder of ECE Policy Works. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Squandering America’s Future – Why ECE Policy Matters for Equality, Our Economy and Our Children,” about critical policy issues in early childhood education (Teachers College Press, 2015).

Susan Ochshorn writes:

Leave the country, and all hell breaks loose. A couple of days ago, in the “Common Core Watch,” the bully pulpit for the conservative Fordham Institute, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs, asked if the blessed academic standards were too hard for kindergarten. The short answer: no.

The occasion for his musings—and supreme irritation—was the publication of “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose,” a report of Defending the Early Years (DEY Project) and the Alliance for Childhood. The paper debunks the common belief that reading earlier is better for future academic success, and warns of the deleterious effects on children of what Pondiscio calls a “perceived shift” from play-based, experiential learning to more academic approaches.

Perception is relative, of course. But where has Pondiscio been? Apparently, he’s heard nothing about the research of Daphna Bassok and Anna Rorem—empirical proof on the shift, from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Working with two national datasets, which straddle the introduction of No Child Left Behind, the authors sought to fill in the gaps about the changing nature of kindergarten in the United States between 1998 and 2006. They discovered that even before the adoption of the Common Core standards, pressure among principals and teachers had accelerated considerably, with high-stakes assessments leading to academic and accountability “shove down.”

For some of that time, according to LinkedIn, Pondiscio was employed in public relations and communications at Time magazine, Hill and Knowlton, and Businessweek. Just as NCLB got going, he spent four years teaching fifth-graders in the South Bronx, before moving on to the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools based in Harlem, where he taught seminars in civics, citizenship, and democracy.
Civics? For someone who calls himself an expert on the machinations of our precious democracy, Pondiscio couldn’t be more disdainful of those who would raise their voices in protest—those who do know something about early child development and education. “The authors make much of the fact that no one involved with writing the standards was a K-3 teacher or early-childhood professional,” he writes. Not important, he concludes.

And then there’s Valerie Strauss. The Washington Post and “Common Core-averse education blogger” has been championing the report in her space, and running pieces by parents and teachers “arguing that ‘forcing some kids to read before they are ready could be harmful.’” What unmitigated nerve!
But let’s get down to the nitty gritty here. Before Pondiscio became a PR guru and a civic society expert, he picked up a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies. Nowhere on his curriculum vitae do I see anything related to kids’ development. Nada.

Yet he has no trouble weighing in on the fine details of the subject—including developmentally appropriate (or inappropriate) practice.
It’s “not as scientifically clear-cut as many suppose,” he writes. “There’s little evidence to suggest that a child’s readiness to learn occurs in the discrete, stair-step phases that Piaget theorized about long ago.” He then goes on to cite cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, who has apparently noted—wisely, I might add—that “children’s cognition is fairly variable day to day, even when the same child tries the same task.” Indeed. The very argument made by the authors of “Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose!” Kids are not universally ready to read at five.

Pondiscio’s in way over his head here. Children’s development is exceedingly uneven. Anyone who knows anything about child development would tell you that—including the Finns, who don’t push their children to read when they’re five, who hold off on standardized testing until much later, and, by the way, are up there with the world’s highest scorers on the PISA tests of academic mastery. Another thing: the Finns revere children, and see early childhood as a time for play, exploration, and the foundation for equality, and citizenship in a democracy.

As Finland’s minister of education, Krista Kiuru, told an interviewer in the Atlantic last spring: “Equal means that we support everyone and we’re not going to waste anyone’s skills. “We can’t know if one first-grader will become a famous composer, or another a famous scientist,” she said. “Regardless of a person’s gender, background, or social welfare status, everyone should have an equal chance to make the most of their skills.”

But Finland’s not cramming kindergarten readiness assessments and reading down the throats of five-year-olds. And Finland doesn’t have alarming rates of preschool expulsion, as we do in the U.S., mostly among little boys of color. Children’s social-emotional development is inextricably linked to their acquisition of cognitive skills. And play is where the cognitive and social-emotional come together. Yes, kids are capable of amazing things—they are, in fact, our littlest innovators—but play, as neuroscientist and anthropologist Melvin Konner wrote in his epic work, “The Evolution of Childhood,” is the primary engine of human development.

Pondiscio says that nothing in the Common Core standards precludes the creation of “safe, warm, nurturing classrooms that are play-based, engaging, and cognitively enriching.” Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so? But such classrooms are rapidly disappearing, given over to learning blocks dedicated to discrete subjects, which sideline the kind of imaginative play on which children thrive. They’re part and parcel of the Common Core package, over which teachers have no control. He also urges early childhood advocates to push “aggressively for teacher education and professional development,” enabling them to meet the Common Core benchmarks. They are pushing, like Sisyphus—but the rock weighs a ton. And as states develop evaluation systems that rate teachers based on student test scores, their very livelihoods are at stake.

I’d suggest a semester of child development 101 for the Fordham Institute’s VP for external affairs. NYC has plenty of terrific programs, and he’s got huge gaps in his own core knowledge.