The SDEA and Common Core

It turns out that the SDEA wants to make it clear that they fully back the common core:

More than 9,000 delegates met in Atlanta this week for the National Education Association’s 2013 Representative Assembly. 

Sandy Arsenault, president of the South Dakota Education Association, says common core standards to prepare K-12 students for achievement in English language arts and mathematics was a top issue at the convention, and one that is supported in South Dakota. "I know there's push-back nationally on the common core standards,” she says. “But the thing that we have to all remember, as we have the common goal of helping our students become literate in the big world out there, I think we need to make sure it's really not the common core the people are upset about, it's really the implementation." 

The NEA has supported common core standards in the past, but decided at the convention to become more vocal about that support. - 

"The common goal of helping our students become literate in the big world out there...."  Really?  You are saying that teachers didn't have that goal before the common core or NCLB?  I find that insulting!  

There are some aspects I think are positive about the common core.  I am trying very hard to keep a positive attitude about it (especially as I am putting together unit and lessons plans to prove that they align to the CC standards for all of next year).  I don't think it is the implementation that is the problem with most teachers.  One concern is the impact that it will have on literature.  A point made over and over by many teachers and fellow blogger L Kallis.  

Another concern is the testing that will be with it.  My biggest concern is falling to the potential dumbing down of some of our standards and making other standards that are impossible to reach.  I spoke with a elementary education teacher the other day and she is worried because her students that have writing/reading disabilities will be hurt because of the new way math is going to be handled.  She pointed out that they can do the math, the disability is in the language skills.  

The common core has some potentially good ideas, but it isn't going to be the cure to making sure students "are literate in the big world out there."