At one point or another every Common Core fighter has heard this line, or a version of it, as a defense for the lack of public vetting of the standards:
Forty-six states brought together experts, teachers and researchers to write the Common Core State Standards, along with almost 10,000 comments and suggestions, including many from Oregon teachers and parents. Oregon adopted them in 2010. The standards are well-matched for our classrooms and will help our students learn more. Please visithttp://corestandards.org/the-standards to read the full set of standards.
In the last week, I’ve obtained some of these 10,000 comments – which turned out to be really 8,731 comments. I’ve begun publishing the North Carolina portion of the ‘public comments’ made to the CoreStandards.org site prior to Common Core being rolled out in 2010. Get caught up:
I’ve just finished the next section (K-5 ELA reading) where written feedback instead of a number score could given. You can access this document and download it here.
In total, there was only one positive comment about the K-5 Reading section. Almost all speak to the age and developmental inappropriateness.
A few excerpts:
| North Carolina | doctoral candidate, early childhood education | Disagree with the standard for kindergarteners that they should be able to read emergent literature & informational texts. This will be especially challenging for ELL’s Also disagree that kindergarteners should “Read at least twenty-five very-high frequency words by sight (e.g., the,of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).” |
| North Carolina | K-12 Teacher | These standards have totally forgotten the nature of young children. Research has repeatedly and recently shown that children in the early grades need lots of time for instructional and developmentally appropriate play and these standards do not allow for that. I am a kindergarten teacher and I take each child where he/she is and move them as far along as I possibly can. Many of our young children enter kindergarten, however, with very limited play and language experiences. These children do not need rigorous standards. They need teachers and administrators who understand the nature of the young child. Please consider reading research on the importance of activity and play for young children and completely revamp these standards. Thank you. |
| North Carolina | K-12 Teacher | Even the term “appropriately rigorous” should not be applied to young students! Experiential learning through structured play is more developmentally appropriate for the youngest grades than phonetic awareness, as a single example. The standards also fail to address our brightest minds, who may come to school with an entire host of strengths that will be completely ignored with the framework you have laid out. Our educational system should support young children at their developmental level through researched-based science and classroom-proven techniques, not simply a call for more “rigor” in the younger grades and a model for learning that ignores what our children truly need. |
LL1885 
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