No Common Core, Period. Slowing it Down Aint Gonna Cut It.

You Can't Just Slow It Down

Just a friendly reminder to all of our politician friends, edu friends and God save us even some classroom teachers : We are not looking to delay, slow down or otherwise stall the implementation of Common Core. The only acceptable outcome for American public education is the wholesale abandonment of Common Core. In the words of The Tragically Hip -- Fully,  Completely. Anything short of that is unacceptable.

Imagine if ed reformers suddenly became invested in the lucrative business of recycling old tires and simultaneously staked their claim in the unlikely process of processing the voluminous national supply of yuppy bagged dogshit. And before you know it you start reading about a government incentive that aims to improve health and nutrition and states are being essentially coerced through funding maneuvers to participate in it or lose out. Well wouldn't you know it but the ed reformers have lobbied the FDA and created some science that allows for a given percentage of recycled rubber and dog turd in school lunches and before year's end the objective will be to remove the current offerings and aggressively increase the percentage of BF Dogflop to 100%. Your kids will be exclusively dining on recycled rubber and dog shite by the end of the year or your state will be taking it in the shorts come federal funds time. They may pass the money off to the states and let people like John King decide who's eating what and who's getting paid, the program, like Common Core is not written in stone. Shit, it's not even written, that's how much like Common Core it is. 

So tell me elected officials, are you good with slowing this down and spreading it out over 3 or 4 years or does it make more sense to answer as Shakespeare's Duncan does (not the moron at the DoE) with an Absolute Sir Not I? Pretty sure we want to slam the door in this one's face ASAP. Again for the record friends: The standards are NOT o.k. They are fucking stupid. They make school and education things kids hate and dread. They make school and "teaching" things teachers hate and dread. Slowing down the spread of "The Core" will not fix what's wrong with it. Along with being stupid the Common Core Standards are developmentally dead ass wrong. Among other foibles, Math experts can't figure out for the life of them why the hell "the standards" are tossing elements from calculus into Algebra for 9th graders. A guy with a Harvard degree in Lit wonders what the hell a 3rd grade assignment means when they ask kids to "create a narrative experience." Really smart people are laughing at the stupidity of "the standards" and others who "get" child development can't figure out why torturing kids with stuff that's 6 feet over their heads, making them feel stupid and call themselves failures is part of a "rigorous" education. It's not. It sucks and it needs to be deep sixed. FAST. 

We need to avoid the easy language of compromise that dribbles from the lips of high level union sellouts like AFT's Randi Weingarten and NYSUT's Dick Ianuzzi who are beholden to Bill Gates for the millions they've accepted from him. They had their little lovefests in places like Aspen, far away from the furious work of the classroom where they rest of us have lately been taking an asskicking thanks to the likes of Gates. I've recently heard my own union president has some confusion about his own loyalties to the membership because of a personal association with a ridiculously rich banker who likes to throw money at charter schools, demolish unions and pay for TFA to invade Buffalo Schools. Well if that's the case and I trust my source that it is, it looks like it's time for BTF to get itself a new leader and a new direction. 

Rank and Filers need to clean house and get rid of so called leadership that follows instead of leads. We can't afford at this point to be fronted by Weingartens and Ianuzzis or anyone else who allows the special interests of billionaires and corporations to interfere with looking out for teachers.  It's never going to be perfect but we can do a lot better than what we have right now.