Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/11/teachers-union-abruptly-breaks-rank-on-common-core/#ixzz37NFS2qym
In a major surprise, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the country’s second-largest teachers union, opened its biannual convention Friday by announcing a step back from its support for Common Core education standards.
The group, gathering in Los Angeles, announced that it will now provide monetary grants from its Innovation Fund for teachers who want to critique the standards or even write entirely new ones themselves.
The AFT’s executive council is also introducing a resolution, to be voted on at the convention, which would declare that the standards had noble intentions but have fallen short due to outside meddling and an inordinate focus on standardized tests.
The announcement came as part of a general opening address by AFT President Randi Weingarten.
“Some of you in this room think the standards should be jettisoned,” told thousands of assembled teachers. “Some of you, myself included, think they hold great promise, but they’ve been implemented terribly.”
With that in mind, Weingarten said, the AFT was willing to offer support funds for teachers who want to improve, modify, or otherwise change the content or implementation of Common Core.
Weingarten’s focus on criticizing Common Core’s implementation as opposed to actual content is understandable, as AFT was closely involved in the standards’ creation. While encouraging teachers to simply modify parts of Common Core falls short of outright disavowing the standards, though, widespread rewrites of Common Core could also eliminate the “common” nature of them that encouraged their adoption in the first place.
Common Core has aroused its most notable opposition on the right from activists who claim the multistate standards constitute a federal takeover of education and object to particular components of the standards.
However, it has also seen increasing opposition on the left as well, particularly from a new faction of almost 100,000 left-wing teachers calling themselves the Badass Teachers Association, many of whose members are also a part of AFT. Such teachers typically object to how the standards further entrench the role of standardized tests in education and oppose using such tests to implement merit pay or fire teachers for alleged ineffectiveness.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/11/teachers-union-abruptly-breaks-rank-on-common-core/#ixzz37NFJavSm
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