Educational Malpractice

Members of the State Board of Education’s Arizona Standards Development Committee (ASDC) speak out.

"Preempting the Arizona Standards Development Committee (ASDC) that was about to conclude 18 months of work, on December 19 the State Board of Education (SBE) voted to impose Common Core standards on all Arizona schools—likely at a tremendous cost to the state’s recent education gains!  

In 2010, the SBE adopted "Common Core" for Arizona schools. Parents and teachers soon started having difficulty learning and teaching them. 

Like many government mandates, Common Core benefited those who place profits above our children’s future.   Children who loved math started to hate math.  Children who loved writing started to hate writing.  Parents recognized a problem.  Sometimes, parents with engineering and math degrees couldn’t help their children with basic arithmetic.  

In spite of "over 200 teachers spending over 6,000 volunteer hours to complete a comprehensive revision on the standards," the 2016 Arizona Draft Standards have hardly been changed, especially for Kindergarten through Grade 3.  They are still Common Core.  They are still developmentally inappropriate.  You have until Oct. 3 to make a difference in a child’s education!  Please click HERE to comment.  Or send an email to the Arizona State Board inbox at inbox@azsbe.az.gov.

Grades K-3 are critically important, because whatever is learned in these grades affects a child’s success in every grade that follows.  

The English Language Arts and Math Executive Summaries indicate that the review Committees considered Clarity, Cognitive Demand, and Measurability. 

Why didn’t they ask this question?   “Is the standard developmentally appropriate? 

The first draft of the "Arizona Standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics" has been completed and is available for public comment on the Arizona State Board of Education website. Click HERE to read them.    

We have until Oct. 3, 2016 to submit comments.  Some improvements over Common Core include: 1) the removal of wording that directed teachers how to teach a standard in a specific way, 2) the over-emphasis on informational text has been lifted, and 3) cursive writing is back in.  

Unfortunately, the standards you will see in Kindergarten through Grade 3 continue to be developmentally inappropriate.  Young children are not little adults.  Their brains haven’t developed to where they can reflect on their own thinking.  They cannot think abstractly.  They cannot empathize or view the world as others do.  

In Kindergarten especially, children are internally motivated to be independent and creative, and this is very important to them.  They are learning to tie their shoes, erect a sand castle, pull up their pants, tie a bow.  They are working on competence, mastery, and creativity.  

This is not the time to encourage dependence and conformity.  It is not appropriate to demand that they express opinions about an author’s motives, or collaborate and seek others’ suggestions and incorporate them into their writing.  Some children will “get it.”  However, many more won’t.  Teachers will have to drill, drill, and drill the right responses into them.  This time would be better spent teaching grade-appropriate materials.  Children who cannot meet these standards will experience much stress and a loss of creativity.  They will wrongly suffer disapproval from teachers and parents, and might be considered “delayed” and subjected to remedial classes they don’t need.  See Dr. Megan Koschnick’s 9/9/2013 videotaped presentation, which she gave at a  conference at the University of Notre Dame. The event was sponsored by American Principles Project. 

If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, concerned citizen, or if you specialize in child development, please comment on some of these inappropriate standards.  Please also copy me at anitalchristy@gmail.com, so I can share your comments with members of our Mommy Lobby.  We want to ensure that the State Board is made aware of these serious issues.