How Many People Does it Take?

How many people should be responsible for writing the standards that millions of children will be expected to learn? What kinds of credentials should they have?

A mere TWO people wrote the language arts standards of the new Common Core. There was a third person that was consulted. The content that millions of teachers are now required to teach and that even more students are required to learn rests on two (and a half) individuals. But it's ok, because those two individuals are probably highly qualified, right?

David Coleman is perhaps the more notorious creator of the Common Core language arts standards. After graduating from Yale, he studied English literature at Oxford University and classical philosophy at Cambridge University. Not too shabby. Then, he applied for a high school teaching position in New York.... and was turned down. Instead, he began work with a large consulting firm, advising urban school districts. He has never been a teacher and has no educational training whatsoever. But wait, advising urban schools must count for something, right? Sure, but that is the business/administration side of schools and has little to do with instruction.

Anyone writing an educational standard should have some sort of education training and/or experience. Understanding how kids learn is important to creating standards. Incidentally, I left public education due to my interest in neuroscience. We have made leaps and bounds in brain research in the last 30 years but this amazing stuff has been ignored by public education. It is so incredibly frustrating to see schools doing the opposite of what research proves to be effective. Perhaps if the people who wrote the standards had some knowledge of teaching and how kids learn, their standards wouldn't ignore proven research.

To Each Their Own Pace

"A child who is miserable with a curriculum is not 'learning' a whole lot. As for what they're 'supposed to' learn and when they're 'supposed to' learn it, I think they pull this stuff out of a hat and call it good. It has nothing to do with how children learn and what will serve each individual the best. It's about pushing the meat through the grinder. A numbers game. We find that we do better without adhering to a standard scope and sequence because we're tailoring the education to the individual."

~The Libertarian Homeschooler


Standards, by definition, are NOT individualized. Teachers are encouraged to differentiate instruction to meet all children's needs, but in a classroom of 30 or more, that is utterly impossible. 

A standard suggests that there is a specific concept that a child should have mastered at a specific point in time. But why? Why is it so important that a child master any given concept at a particular age? If you have children, think about this. At what age did each child learn to walk and talk? Probably it was different for each kid. So then, why can't each kid master concepts and skills at his own pace throughout his school days? Why must we have deadlines for mastery?

I've heard a story of an unschooled kid who was slow to begin reading. Suddenly, at age nine, he blossomed and couldn't stop reading. By public school standards, he would have been labeled with any variety of (often negative) terms used for kids who have not achieved mastery by an arbitrary set date. He likely would have been placed in remedial reading classes under the Special Education umbrella, where kids who enter rarely leave. 

Strict and arbitrary standards are not healthy for kids. I say let kids learn what they want when they want, because, why not?