Letters: Common Core sets education back
Classrooms across Long Island were empty on Thursday. Check our listings of delayed openings, closures and cancellations to see what's in store for Friday. Credit: Daniel Brennan
Your editorial "Testing the Common Core" [Oct. 5] was a brilliant example of misdirection! Here are the real answers to the "true or false" questions:
1) Teachers oppose the Common Core. Their statewide and nationwide unions support the standards because they are beholden to political and corporate figures who financially support them.
2) Using the "we can't stop now" mentality has kept the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan for 12 years, and we are no closer to stability in the region. The New York State government could repeal the Common Core program -- as Oklahoma did -- but it lacks the political will to do so. State officials are looking out for party interests, not the interests of students, parents and schools.
3) The standards were the "brainchild" of the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and David Coleman, the Common Core's chief architect. If the Common Core involved teachers in its creation, why did so few teachers hear about the standards before 2010, when the U.S. Department of Education coerced New York to adopt them to qualify for Race to the Top funding?
4) What does "partly informed by research around and results of the ACT college admissions tests" mean, exactly? You did not provide any research about whether the Common Core will work or not.
Henry Dircks, Bethpage
Editor's note: The writer is a social studies teacher in the Bellmore-Merrick school district.
As a mother of three children in public schools, I would like to respond to "Stop Common Core is a wasted vote" [Opinion, Oct. 9]. First, this is more than a testing issue. Common Core is an unproven gamble with no data to support its promise of success. The immediate effects are disastrous.
A number of children are disengaging from school and learning due to the developmentally inappropriate and unnecessary confusion of the material, especially math and especially in kindergarten through eighth grades. Parents are outraged at the deaf ears that their complaints have fallen on and will use this ballot line to make this issue as important as it is.
The tests columnist Anne Michaud refers to are, yes, the same in quantity, but are no longer of the same quality. That is the point of the objections.
The Stop Common Core ballot line came about because thousands of parents have seen firsthand the damage Common Core is inflicting, not just on the individual child but on public education.
Deborah Lang, Mount Sinai
