When the General Assembly of Maryland convenes on Jan 8, they plan to talk about the Common Core. Some lawmakers, backed by Republican gubernatorial hopeful and current Harford County Executive David R Craig, have suggested legislation to withdraw the state’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards or leave the multi-state testing consortium known as PARCC.
The General Assembly is Democratic by majority, so most analysts are calling any changes long shots, but daggers are being thrown at the Common Core from both sides of the political aisle lately. The right opposes the apparent imposition of a federal curriculum on states, and the left opposes how districts impose a curriculum on teachers, which takes away their freedom and classroom autonomy. In other words, the right hates the Common Core based on where it came from, and the left hates the Common Core because of where it’s going. The Common Core sits in the middle, and we watch to see how much Teflon remains.
Furthermore, educators are starting to poke holes in the standards, including justifiable assertions that the K-2 English language arts standards are not age-appropriate and that certain math standards can’t be tested on a standardized test, a fact which might cause them to be left out of the classroom, since teachers will be evaluated based on the tests, not the standards. Financial analysts, too, have shown that the savings that will come to Maryland based on the standardized tests are small and may be nonexistent.
Because of a lousy implementation in the state’s schools and lots of atrocious public relations on the part of school officials, the majority of people in the state see the Common Core standards themselves as one and the same with the tests that promise to align with the standards, a new teacher evaluation system based in part on those tests, and the need to increase the number or power of computers in schools so kids can take the tests and schools can purchase more test preparation materials, produced by for-profit corporations, to “prepare” students not for life or even the continuation of their education, but for the aforementioned tests.
Some of those test preparation materials have been an embarrassment to the profession of teaching. They have caused not only failing scores to be written on 6-year-olds’ quizzes but also the utter misrepresentation of the standards, which were designed to encourage higher-level thinking on the part of students.
In addition, teachers report being ill-prepared to teach the new standards in many parts of the state (and nation). The union representing more than 8,000 teachers in Baltimore County filed a grievance with the school district, saying teachers were becoming stressed due to overwork and needed more time to adjust to the Common Core. Even I would oppose the standards if this were what they represent.
The Baltimore Sun reported that Senators on the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee grilled State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery about the new reforms, telling her they have been “bombarded by concerns from teachers and parents.” Grassroots groups are also springing up around the state and increasing in number and volume, echoing some of the parents’ and teachers’ concerns, including those who protested in several counties and in front of the State Education Building on Nov 18.
