Are any of you commenting above teachers? I and all of my many teacher friends and colleagues, as well as most other high school educators I speak to in the state, REALLY LIKE the Common Core standards. The English/Language Arts standards are extremely thorough and well written. (I can't speak as well to the others. I do not teach those subjects, so I have not used them.) The college and career readiness standards are great. They are SO much better than the very poorly written NJ standards which were in place prior to these...
Smart parents have no understanding of what Common Core is because politicians and the media have thrown talking points at you for so long that you have no idea what is going on. It is not your fault. And teachers have mostly been too quiet...probably because they are afraid after how badly they have been burned by Christie's administration over the last five years. This has gone on for far too long, though, PLEASE go online and start reading the standards. They are not the enemy. The test is.
And no one is going to be happy when Christie commissions a panel (probably composed of corrupt businessmen) to create new standards for our state. We'll spend a ton of money to produce something that is nowhere near as good as what we currently have. Then, school districts will have to spend a ton of money rewriting curriculum (which we just rewrote to line up with the Common Core) to align with the new standards. Then districts will have to retrain teachers to teach for the new standards. Then the state will spend billions of dollars commissioning and implementing a new standardized test to go with the new standards. Then we will continue the devastating spiral that is destroying the public education system in our state forever. Stop the madness! Parents, teachers, and other concerned community members need to come together so that everyone actually understands what is going on. Right now the politicians and media are doing a terrific job of dividing us, allowing us to be too easily conquered.