Sent to the Leavenworth Times on 2/23/14: In his email update to constituents, John Bradford said Sunday that his Education Committee will work this week on House Bill 2621, which would declare the Kansas College and Career Ready Standards (Common Core) to be null and void.
He goes on to say that the President of the National Education Association (NEA) has called the standards "completely botched." This is incorrect. What NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said is that “in far too many states, implementation has been completely botched.” Why is that? In part, because of legislation like HB-2621.
About the standards themselves, Van Roekel says they “would help students develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the fast-changing world. . . . The promise of these high standards for all students is extraordinary.” He does say, “Teachers report that there has been little to no attempt to allow educators to share what's needed to get Common core implementation right. In fact, two thirds of all teachers report that they have not even been asked how to implement these new standards in their classrooms." The first statement is true in many Kansas schools, where school financing does not allow for the time in teacher schedules that they need to collaborate. The second statement is not true in Kansas. Here, getting implementation right is generally up to the teachers themselves. That is certainly true at Leavenworth High School.
Van Roekel goes on to say, “… Scuttling these standards will simply return us to the failed days of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), where rote memorization and bubble tests drove teaching and learning. NEA members don’t want to go backward; we know that won’t help students. Instead, we want states to make a strong course correction and move forward.”
Van Roekel also says that “the first step is for policymakers to treat teachers as professionals and listen to what we know is needed. Give us the resources and time—time to learn the standards, collaborate with each other, develop curriculum that is aligned to the standards, and time to field-test the standards in classrooms to determine what works and what needs adjustment. We also need the financial resources for updated textbooks and fully aligned teaching and learning materials.”
This is what the students and teachers of Kansas need their legislators to do for them. Instead, Representative Bradford proposed the legislation last session that would withdraw even more funding for the work teachers need to do, and this session he appears to support HB-2621, which would have the same effect.
Ginger Riddle
Mathematics Teacher at Leavenworth High School
Readers who want to read the rest of Dennis VanRoekel’s statement can visit http://neatoday.org/
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