What do most public teachers and students across the nation have to look forward to as they head back for the 2012-13 school year? Asks Boston educator Larry Myatt, a convener with The Forum for Education and Democracy, the co-founder of the Education Resources Consortium and a former National Faculty Member of The Coalition of Essential Schools.
* Yet another “common core [1]”. (What’s wrong with the dozens, if not hundreds, that states, curriculum and cultural organizations have already
constructed over the past decades? Is it the lists or what we do/don’t do with them that make us need a “latest version”?)
* Lots more testing, costing us hundreds of millions of dollars [2]to implement even in times of budget scarcity. (Have you been in or around a school when testing is taking place? Stress. Anxiety. A brink’s truck worth of secrecy and security passing as education. By the way, our new generation of school leaders and teachers has grown up on standardized testing.)
* The administration of President Obama saying that those tests don’t give a full picture of the quality of learning.