Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog had a range of reactions to the growing opposition to the Common Core State Standards, a voluntary set of standards that supporters contend will enhance academic rigor, make students more college- and career-ready and allow apple-to-apple state comparisons. Georgia is among the 45 states that have adopted the standards. Here is a sampling of comments:
Bootney: Common Core is a crashing social engineering failure and should be ditched. However, the idiots in the GOP aren't making this an issue because they actually care; they are doing it because it's a red meat issue they can count on to gin up the base — regardless of need or cost. A pox on Common Core, the GOP for the reasons they are going at it, and the DNC for supporting it. A pox on them all
Sara: This stuff is so confusing to me. From what I read about Common Core, it sounded good … more in-depth type of learning as opposed to slamming as much info in a grading period as humanly possible. As a parent, I was on board. Our teacher actually said the new standards are probably what helped my dyslexic first-grader improve so much, especially in reading.
Title 1 Educator: Common Core is a voluntary initiative among states. No state has been penalized for slow adoption or opting out. It certainly allows states, districts and individual schools to differentiate and even add particular standards. For example, because of Common Core, Georgia elementary standards now include penmanship, allowing teachers to dedicate more time and attention to such a necessary life skill. Former peers in New York didn't know how much grammar, spelling conventions and punctuation a sixth-grader should know, because the old standards didn't specify them. Like me, much of America is mobile, and I've seen the impact of the lack of standardization on children. Schools, despite our best intentions, aren't equal, just like society. Still, I think you should be able to compare schools based on economics and demographics. However, at my school, it is such a norm that students from other states are superior to local kids that they are generally programmed into our high achievers program without seeing a transcript.
Looking4Truth: I'm not worried about the Common Core State Standards. They are very much what I learned in school. What does concern me is their adoption in a period of budget constraints so that proper materials can't or won't be purchased.
Mathmom: Georgia did not field test the Georgia Performance Standards (at least in mathematics), so why would we field test the Common Core? The GPS in mathematics has been an unmitigated disaster — easily avoided if the state DOE had taken the time to field test the program. Oh, but wait. That implies that anyone at the state DOE would have been able to determine, from a field test implementation, what the problems might be. So, I guess field testing would be a waste of time here.
