BRAVO: Teacher Slams Common Core and Then Resigns

The Common Core education standards and curriculum that have been imposed onschool systems across the country are a bad idea.

Proponents of Common Core claim that it will raise standards, but it in fact does the opposite, reducing them to the lowest common denominator by setting a one-size-fits-all curriculum for the widely diverse student population in our country.

Now that the standards are being implemented, teachers and states are realizing that they are not what they were sold to be.  Some states have refused to implement the standards, and other states, like Indiana and Oklahoma, are withdrawing from Common Core and allowing their local school districts to develop their own curriculum and standards.

An English teacher from Colorado recently appeared on America’s Newsroom on Fox News  with host Martha MacCallum to discuss a viral blog post she had written slamming Common Core.  The post read, in part:

“I can no longer be a part of a system that continues to do the exact opposite of what I am supposed to do as a teacher – I am supposed to help them think for themselves, help them find solutions to problems, help them become productive members of society. Instead, the emphasis on Common Core Standards and high-stakes testing is creating a teach-to-the-test mentality for our teachers and stress and anxiety for our students.”

“Students have increasingly become hesitant to think for themselves because they have been programmed to believe that there is one right answer that they may or may not have been given yet. That is what school has become: A place where teachers must give students “right” answers, so students can prove (on tests riddled with problems, by the way) that teachers have taught students what the standards have deemed are a proper education.”

Pauline Hawkins is resigning at the end of this school year, because she has become frustrated with the Common Core standards in the public school system, especially after watching her third-grade son struggle with them.

“He’s struggling to keep up with where they want him to be and he’d come home every day, crying, [saying] ‘I hate school,’” she said, adding that the government standards fail to take into account that every student learns differently.

“They have certain skills that they want the kids to have at a certain time, at a certain age, at a certain grade level. And kids just aren’t made like that. We’re all different,” said Hawkins, who added that there are “good intentions” behind the standards, but the implementation is much too rigid.

Watch the latest video at video.insider.foxnews.com

There might actually be “good intentions” by some of the creators of the Common Core standards, but their intentions don’t necessarily reflect the reality. Some would even argue that the actual intentions of the standards aren’t good at all.

Common Core is filled with convoluted and complex math problems that even adults struggle with.  The “history” that is being taught in the curriculum is based on a liberal progressive ideology that borders on socialism.  The data-collection and bureaucracy involved in Common Core present a “slippery-slope” towards a homogenous, standardized population of students where everyone is the same and individualism is weeded out.

More states, municipalities and local school districts need to opt-out of Common Core, and return the decision making power about standards and curriculum to the people that truly understand the needs of their students, the teachers and parents.  Common Core is just the latest example of why we should privatize the public school system, and get the nanny-state, “we know what’s best for everyone” government out of our children’s education.

http://www.capitalisminstitute.org/teacher-slams-common-core/