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NEA Joins Effort to Create Common Core of State Standards

vonzastrowc's picture
By Claus von Zastrow on February 25, 2009

For the past few years, several education groups have been helping states collaborate on a common core of "college- and career-ready standards for high school graduates." On Monday, the 3.2-million member National Education Association announced that it had joined the effort. This, shortly after the National Governors Association members officially endorsed the approach.

Some see this move as a decisive step towards national standards--one that avoids the pitfalls of "federalizing education."

Here's NEA's press release:

NEA partners to develop standards for measuring 21st century skills

Education collaborative strives to ensure global competitiveness for students

Washington--NEA is pleased to announce its partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors Association, Achieve, Inc., the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Hunt Institute, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and the Business Roundtable, in a new state-led initiative to improve the access of every student to a complete, high-quality education that provides the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in the 21st century. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is working to produce a common core of voluntary state standards across grades. The K–12 standards would cover English/language arts, math, and eventually science. The initiative plans to be an inclusive and transparent process that will include input from education, civil rights and business leaders among others.

“NEA welcomes the opportunity to participate in this effort to provide manageable, high-quality standards for adoption by states to guide efforts to improve education,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “We are pleased that the voices of classroom educators will now be a part of this process. NEA’s members and staff have been working diligently to transform public education to ensure that every student has access to a great public school. The work of the collaborative directly aligns with NEA’s goal to transform public education and our ongoing role with The Partnership for 21st Century Skills,” Van Roekel said.

While applauding this collaborative effort to establish better quality academic standards, NEA is also committed to promoting standards for learning that support and provide resources for schools, teachers and students. International benchmarking against academic standards must be comprehensive and include accountability for child well-being, facilities and supplies. NEA remains an advocate of including other essential areas of schooling, such as civic responsibility, in education transformation efforts. NEA also believes it is critical that standards and the assessments associated with them also provide appropriate accommodations and modifications for both students with disabilities and English Language Learners.

In response to NEA’s becoming a partner with this initiative, CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit said, “The engagement of NEA in the Common Core State Standards Initiative is a major and essential development. The voice of teachers is absolutely critical to this important work and adds tremendous value to the initiative.”

To learn more about the National Education Association, please visit www.nea.org.

Link to this story: http://www.learningfirst.org/node/2340

7 Comments Digg this article Del.icio.us

What do Civil rights leaders

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 08:52

What do Civil rights leaders have to do with Math, English, or Science? Why not get the input of leaders in those fields? Why does it cost 8000 per student to educate in the public system, yet only 2500 or so for a far superior private education? OR even less than $1000 for a home school based education?
Why should we let some international organization or even national organization decide what is best for our children? Local school boards are most responsive to the parents... and parents are the ones in charge of their children's education.

Best regards,

James

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James--Quite a few questions,

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 21:47

James--Quite a few questions, and not enough space to address them all here.

Regarding your question about "far superior" private education: Three independent studies have found that, when you control for student background, students don't do any better in private schools than in public schools. And, as with public schools, private school per-pupil costs run the gamut.

As for why we would allow international or national organizations to decide what's best for our children.... Your question is a bit of a red herring. In what way are national or international organizations deciding anything about our children if states want to get together and benchmark a common core of standards against standards in high-performing nations? How does that take the school board out of the equation? States have been setting standards for years without substantial school board complaint.  

By they way, watch those per-pupil expenditures soar if every local district has to set its own standards....

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The CCSSI says this is a

Submitted by LeoDev on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 11:26

The CCSSI says this is a state led effort. It is state led in terms of the NGA and CCSSO leading the effort. How do you get 49 states to so readily agree and commit to something like this---and give away their rights and responsibilities as states? Strong arm them? Coercion? Bribery? Dangle the $$$ carrot in front of them? Such a great scramble for the money with lots of talk---little essays [Link removed], if any, of that talk has had anything to do with what really works or is good for students.
It is interesting that the PTA, with a Gates grant no less, signed on board big time to support the common core state K-12 standards---sight unseen. Unbelievable! Incredible! Or is it just Gullible! Evidence based or evidence debased? People need to be aware of the PTA's blind support for this. What did the PTA see to support? Did they see (without ever seeing them) a world class set of standards? or did they see $$$$? This has more to do with $$$ than it does with students.

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I see you've plagiarized this

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 12:26

I see you've plagiarized this comment from a comment that originally appeared on Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/poll-common-core-state-standards-initiative. Usually I delete spam, but I had to preserve your plagiarized comment--though I removed your link to an essay mill. The irony was just too rich--An essay service that sells papers to students who can pay the price gets people to plagiarize when submitting spam comments. Well done.

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