Rage Against the Common Core - NYTimes.com

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has embraced high stakes testing and married it to the Common Core standards.  That was a mistake and his force it down their throats approach has created a real crisis for the movement to set consistent and high national standards.  - gwc
Rage Against the Common Core - NYTimes.com
by David L. Kirp  // U.C. Berkeley

It’s no simple task to figure out what schools ought to teach and how best to teach it — how to link talented teachers with engaged students and a challenging curriculum. Turning around the great gray battleship of American public education is even harder. It requires creating new course materials, devising and field-testing new exams and, because these tests are designed to be taken online, closing the digital divide. It means retraining teachers, reorienting classrooms and explaining to anxious parents why these changes are worthwhile.

Had the public schools been given breathing room, with a moratorium on high-stakes testing that prominent educators urged, resistance to the Common Core would most likely have been less fierce. But in states where the opposition is passionate and powerful, it will take a herculean effort to get the standards back on track.
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