The nation’s largest teachers’ union said that states and districts in too many places have “botched” the implementation of the Common Core standards, reports my colleague Steve Sawchuk over at Teacher Beat.
NEA still supports Common Core, but thinks teachers must be given more time to learn to work with the standards and more professional development. Tests not aligned to the standards should no longer be given, and stakes should not be attached to new, common-core-aligned tests until 2015-16 at the earliest, Steve wrote.
For many states with waivers from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, those “stakes” mean teacher evaluations based in part on student outcomes, a key element of the waivers—and the piece of implementation states have struggled with the most. The Education Department has already allowed states extra time to fully implement the evaluations, on the heels of similar criticism from Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.