Sorry, but Randi Weingarten’s call for a “moratorium on the consequences of high stakes testing with the Common Core standards” is worthless!

We don’t need a moratorium on “consequences” associated with the Common Core.  We need the abolition of all high-stakes testing and dissolution of the Common Core.

Anything else is a capitulation to the destructive forces of the education reform machine!

According to Randi, “We have the ability to transform the very DNA of teaching and learning, to move away from rote memorization and endless test taking, and toward problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork….”

What in the world is she talking about?  I agree with her first assertion and that the DNA of teaching and learning will be transformed.  However, let’s be honest.  The transformation will really be a genetic mutation that disfigures teaching and learning so that “rote memorization and endless test taking” will be at the core of all teaching and learning.   Problem solving, critical thinking, and teamwork will be forever banned from the genetic material that makes up real teaching and learning.

However, I do agree with Randi that “[t]he Common Core standards have the potential to be a once-in-a-generation revolution in education….”  If we allow this “revolution” to proceed we will destroy authentic teaching and learning and reduce our children to untapped vessels of data. We are literally about to sell the souls (data) of millions of children in the name of the Common Core and this will revolutionize education!

There is no middle ground on the Common Core.  It is a curriculum directly linked to high stakes testing and the selling of data to for profit companies.

Someone has to say it!

This is not “solution driven unionism.”  This is individual protectionism. This is nothing more than a massive sell out of AFT membership and American public school children.