Chicago Teachers Union votes to oppose Common Core Standards

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 5/7/2014 | BECKY SCHLIKERMAN

[NEMDF]

The Chicago Teachers Union has voted to oppose the Common Core Standards, a rigorous set of educational benchmarks implemented by Illinois law and in many other states.

[NEMDF]

This is incredible!

[AU72]

Probably because they’ll have to tear up their old lesson plans and have to write new ones. Too much work.

[Little Pig]

Presumably, not the laughably-bad classroom materials, but rather the teaching standards and testing thresholds that they will be held accountable to.

[rarestia]

What’s incredible is that if a bunch of liberals eschew Commie Core, then it must be worse than even we suspect.

Florida’s been running commercials on the networks to espouse the Commie Core standards in Florida with these rather large, teacher-ly women saying how great it’s going to be.

Most parents I know are not amused nor are they on board.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Uh oh.

It isn’t just for us Right Wingers anymore.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Occam’s Razor.

Teachers Unions reflexively recoil against ANY standards.

[paladinan]

Precisely what I was thinking. I doubt that even 20% of the Chicago teachers’ union members would object to the amoral, illogical dreck which saturates Common Core; but anything which smacks of extra work and accountability (”we can’t accept oversight from *them*, since they just wouldn’t understand!”, etc.) is poison to teachers’ unions.

Reason #235,999 why secular teachers’ unions (and all secular labor unions) should be abolished.

[MrB]

CC wasn’t written with any education goals in mind,
it’s simply an indoctrination curriculum,

with some semblance of core education sprinkled on top to hide it.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Well that’s a bit of good news and in Chicago no less.

[SIRTRIS]

Probably a good idea to send this full article to the Florida Commie Core liberal teachers & cause them to wonder what’s so common?

[goodwithagun]

Actually CC is pretty much scripted. It really doesn’t require that much planning. Their big issue is the end of year testing. If they sit at their desks and do nothing with the script, the students’ scores will indicate this.

[hsmomx3]

I am shocked!!!!

[bboop]

Common Core is TERRIBLE. That even the Commie Teachers Union opposes it tells volumes.

[paladinan]

Actually CC is pretty much scripted. It really doesn’t require that much planning. Their big issue is the end of year testing. If they sit at their desks and do nothing with the script, the students’ scores will indicate this.

Re: it being scripted... that's true enough! When CC proponents object to CC being "curriculum"--e.g. "It's not curriculum; it';s a set of standards, and that's all!", I have to laugh; not only does it descend to the level of curriculum (I've written curricula, and I'm under the general impression that the very purpose of curricula is to specify what's taught at a given school), but it actually descends to the level of a *lesson plan*. Not only does CC overthrow state and local control, but it tries to micromanage individual classrooms!

But re: planning: :) You're being too logical and sane, and assuming that planning and revision has anything to do with actual change in content. No, when any "change" happens like this, every last piece of printed paper in the building needs to be revised to "reflect the new standards" and to "align to them". That way, they give proof that "they're working hard for the kids, and no one appreciates how hard they work".

(BTW: I speak as one who was a public school teacher for 10 years--and a clueless union member, up to the point where I realized that the unions were fiery supporters of abortion on demand--until I left for a parochial school teaching job.)

[goodwithagun]

I am a teacher and I take every opportunity to point out that CC is just a way for the bureaucracy to line their pockets. CC is set up to fail so that bureaucrats can devise another “solution” and make more money. If they fix the problem they are unemployed.

[kidd]

Common Core math replaced Chicago Math

I wonder of that had anything to do with it?

Both are horrible, but Chicago Math wasn’t political.

[bigbob]

Interesting bedfellows

[paladinan]

:) Tell me about it! Every last “initiative” which floats (like a dead fish carcass) down the stream into the public schools was started as the dissertation of some graduate education candidate who needed to publish something—anything, no matter how lame or insane—in order to get their Ph.D., in order to teach at college, in order not to spend the rest of their lives flipping burgers for a living (or living off the public dole).

It wouldn’t bother me *quite* so much, if these dumb things would just stay, forgotten, on a dusty bookshelf of some obscure college’s education dept. library, where they belong! Why some people see the need to *implement* this stuff is beyond me.

[DPMD]

Probably not based on the abysmal nature of Common Core; more likely, it is because the teachers’ union has no standards, doesn’t believe in them. Just money.

[Nevadan]

re: When CC proponents object to CC being “curriculum”—e.g. “It's not curriculum; it’;s a set of standards, and that's all!”, I have to laugh

I am sure the CC proponents must teach that phrase as a useful mantra that is supposed to cut off all objections. I just heard it the other day on a local radio program where the discussion was on CC. A teacher called in who was in the on introduction of CC to our school district from the beginning. She outright lied, insisting that Common Core does not control content but only encourages students to “think and understand”. Baloney! While I have to honestly say that not everything is dysfunctional about the CC curriculum, I have clearly noticed that math instruction, for example is often being made far more complicated than it has to be. But the students are not allowed to do the simple, straight-forward processes. If they do not follow the prescribed methods, they are marked wrong. While the very smart kids may be able to easily pick up the convoluted processes to do some of the math problems, this is not the case for all.

I am not at all surprised that the Chicago Teachers Union is opposing the standards. If the testing scores for the Chicago school district are low now, just wait until the latest scores are revealed. It is not going to be pretty, and who will be blamed? The teachers will take the fall for it.