Question of the Day, from Jean Schutt-McTavish, a principal in New York who is briefing a political candidate on education issues:

What are your top three criticisms of the Common Core?

Schutt-McTavish has gotten some pretty amazing responses, including this one--Won't Get Fooled Again-- from my Michigan buddy and rational math teacher extraordinaire, Michael Goldenberg. Mike doesn't hold back:

It is another doomed attempt to bring about meaningful change through a top-down, punitive system that will be badly misunderstood by many - even if everything in it were good, which is far from the case - and resented by those who for good reasons or bad view it as a wrong-headed path. Much research indicates that such reforms are fated to fail badly because few at the ground level were given a real voice in the process.

Despite the propaganda that this is a state-led reform effort, it is in fact a federal one, supported primarily by corporate interests who are playing this opportunity for all it's worth - new textbooks, new assessments, and new professional development all lining the pockets of the publishers and testing companies. Whether it succeeds or fails matters not - they will profit greatly on this and will be ready to profit further when the next wave of change comes, innocently declaring that not they, but "the states" were the ones who brought this about.

You have a love a guy who quotes The Who as wisdom about curriculum.

My thoughts?

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