My Problem With CCSS

I recently shared a link on Facebook to a petition to repeal Common Core in Oklahoma. A friend asked me what troubled me about the standards. Here is my response:

The aspects of the CCSS and standardized testing that I find troublesome are the ones that require schools to take individual, unique, young human beings and try to stuff them into a standardized box. Our politicians and business leaders want us to treat children like widgets — program them with a common curriculum, send them down the quality control (standardized testing) assembly line and then punish the students (and their schools and teachers) who did not measure up.

But children are not widgets. They come pre-loaded with their own personalities, talents, skills, family systems (which can include innumerable disfunctions), emotions, attitudes and motiviations. Educators must be free to meet children where they are — emotionally, physically and mentally — and guide them through an educational process that seeks to develop children’s strengths and shore up their weaknesses.

This can’t happen in a system of homogenized standards that must be taught in order to pass a standardized test.

I think we’ve been lied to about the failure of the American school system by people who want to dismantle the system for their own monetary and political gain.
Additionally, the CCSS contain specific standards that make no sense at best and are developmentally inappropriate at worst. I’ll let a relatively brief overview of CCSS ELA problems by Diane Ravitch speak for me.

Here is a link to the Shepherd article.