Common Core

If you haven’t heard, education in America has been “fixed” with the snap of a few bureaucrats’ fingers. 

Developed behind closed doors by those who stand to benefit and promoted by a few wealthy individuals, the Common Core Curriculum Standards have arrived in Carlsbad. If you’re unaware of these new standards, you’re not alone. Polls are showing that up to half of Americans have been left in the dark regarding the future of education in America.

The shadowing of these standards shouldn’t surprise you. Our government has an unhealthy attraction to forcing bad policy upon their subjects, and the Common Core standards are only a continuation of the status quo. 

Whether it’s the fact that your children are going to become data mines for unrelated government agencies and non-government entities, or the fact that Common Core Standards have already infuriated educators and agitated young students across the nation, the Common Core standards seem strangely similar to the symbolic old sweater with the loose thread. 

Take ahold of that thread. Pull. Education begins to fall apart.

For those who appreciate options when providing education to your children, the Common Core standards do not provide any definite mechanisms for those who would like to provide homeschooling to their children and “opt-out” from the standardized, one-size-fits-all curriculum standards.

Furthermore, though the standards do not force private schools to adopt, they do integrate with the future teacher accreditation process, meaning that teachers, whether they teach in the public or private system, will be trained and tested on a Common Core platform. 

While Common Core is new in Carlsbad, and time will only show what the effects might be, the results can be seen in other states and districts where Common Core has already been implemented. 

Take for example New York, where eight principals penned a letter to parents expressing their concern over the new standards (1). In just weeks, 350 other New York principals signed onto the letter, agreeing that the Common Core standards were hampering their ability to provide a quality education. So far, 545 Principals have signed it. Below is a snippet of the letter, expressing the difficulty of such rigorous and complex testing in the standards:

We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up. One teacher reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, “This is too hard,” and “I can’t do this,” throughout his test booklet.

Unsurprisingly, New York City Mayor Bloomberg's reply to the outcry was an unsatisfying: "Life is full of tests"

After the first year of adopting the Common Core standards, the test scores for New York were released: Only 31% of students passes, and only 3% of the English language learners passed the English section (2). 

These are our kids and this is our school district. The standards are here, and it's up to us, as the caretakers of our children, to be alert and aware of the education they are receiving. I encourage you to do the research for yourself. Look at the worksheets our students are filling out, and look at some of the complex materials that even adults cannot comprehend, and see if Common Core is the correct path for Carlsbad. 

(1) http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/letter-to-parents-about-testing
(2) http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/opinion/ravitch-common-core-standards/