Today the Times editorial board speaks out regarding the consequences of pushing national standards when the schools simply are not ready.

The new Common Core State Standards are supposed to be implemented in schools in 2014. But the state is far from ready. . . .Though the Obama administration couldn’t legally force new standards on states, it threatened to deny grant money under the federal Race to the Top program if they didn’t create and adopt common standards. . . .   In California, the curriculum standards and the new tests that go with them are supposed to be implemented in the 2014-15 school year. That’s soon, and at the rate California is going, it won’t be ready. The core curriculum standards lay out extensive guidelines about the knowledge and skills that students should master in each grade of public school, in both reading and math. But there are many complicated steps involved in turning those guidelines into a day-to-day educational plan for California schools, and the state isn’t even close to halfway through them. It hasn’t figured out how to go about training teachers, and won’t begin to adopt new textbooks — a slow and politically rancorous process — for at least two years.

The editorial also questions the financial obligation to these news standards:

What’s more, common core is expensive, requiring extensive new training for teachers, new textbooks and computers on which the new tests must be taken. It’s unclear where the state will find the money.

The opinion piece describes standards:

The standards are designed to push students to deeper levels of understanding and analysis. They call on teachers to cover fewer topics but to delve into each more thoroughly, and they discourage rote learning in favor of fuller understanding of the material. In math, for example, it might be less important for students to give the correct answer to a problem than to be able to describe the best process for reaching the solution.

That statement should give parents heartburn! I can’t believe they stated its perspective this clearly! The CORRECT answer in math IS as important as “understanding.”  Especially in early elementary when students are best at memorization.  This is directly opposed to “Classical Education.”

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

The first years of schooling are called the “grammar stage” — not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. In the elementary school years — what we commonly think of as grades one through four — the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts.

The editorial concludes by stating:

Experts are divided over the value of the new curriculum standards, which might or might not lead students to the deeper reading, reasoning and writing skills that were intended.

Duh, you think????

Interesting even the LA Times Editorial Board advises:

And if the state can’t get the right elements in place to do that by 2014, it would be better off delaying the new curriculum a couple of years and doing it right, rather than allowing common core to become yet another educational flash in the pan that never lives up to its promise.