Roy F. McCampbell's Blog

Anthony Cody reviews his own sharp criticism of teachers’ unions during the past year for their support of the Common Core standards in 2013.

Cody questions why teachers have no one to support them when they question the validity of the Common Core.

He doubts that a one-year moratorium on high-stakes testing of the Common Core will matter much.

In a column that he cites, he wrote:

In effect, the Common Core tests will refresh NCLB’s indictment of public schools and teachers, with supposedly scientific precision.

Teachers – and union leaders — may feel as if they should get on board, to try to steer this process. However, I think this is a ship of doom for our schools. I think its effect will be twofold. It will create a smoother, wider, more easily standardized market for curriculum and technology. This will, in turn, promote the standardization of curriculum and…

Governor Jerry Brown is certainly the most interesting and thoughtful state leader on education.

In 2009, when he was state attorney general, he wrote a blistering rebuke to Arne Duncan in opposition to Race to the Top.

He has consistently opposed the overemphasis on standardized testing.

In 2011, he vetoed legislation that didn’t go far enough to stop the misuse of test scores.

Earlier this year the state suspended state testing to prepare for Common Core testing, defying Duncan’s specific order to continue state testing.

Several days ago, Brown blasted state and national standards and tests, saying that learning was highly personal and individual. He said that neither Washington nor Sacramento should play a large role in telling teachers what to teach and what students should learn. He is especially critical of standardized testing.

This is all amazing, not only because a governor with a national profile is saying…

This post was written by Don Batt, an English teacher in Colorado:

There is a monster waiting for your children in the spring. Its creators have fashioned it so that however children may prepare for it, they will be undone by its clever industry.
The children know it’s coming. They have encountered it every year since third grade, and every year it has taken parts of their souls. Not just in the spring. Everyday in class, the children are asked which answer is right although the smarter children realize that sometimes there are parts of several answers that could be right.

And they sit. And they write.

Not to express their understanding of the world. Or to even form their own opinions about ideas they have read. Instead, they must dance the steps that they have been told are important: first, build your writing with a certain number of…