Forbes contributor Alice Walton has written a terrific roundup of the anti-Common Core expert consensus. Numerous education researchers and academics have reservations about greater classroom standardization—particularly in the early grades, where excessive testing and homework is most deleterious for kids. Walton writes: David Elkind, long-time child development expert at Tufts University and author ofThe Hurried Child, says that a related problem with the Common Core standards is that “children are not standardized.” Between ages 4 to 7, he says, kids are undergoing especially rapid changes in cognitive ability, but this neurological and psychological development occurs at all different rates. “Some children attain these abilities—which enable them to learn verbal rules, the essence of formal instruction—at different ages. Some of the experts cited by Walton argued the long hours of standardized testing that kindergartners must endure under Common Core are wholly inappropriate: Diane Ravitch, education historian at NYU and vocal critic of the Common Core, says that in particular, “the early grades are developmentally inappropriate. Children of 5 and 6 and 7 need time for play, not a forced academic march. They will have 6-hour, 8-hour tests. That is nuts…. The American ideal was always a well-rounded child prepared for citizenship and life. Now it is all test prep.” Read more
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 10:36:21 +0000
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