A show of hands ... who expects these new, controlled and smaller venues to actually open more communication lines with parents?
C'mon, Commissioner King ... not a soul is fooled.
You want to control the dialogue ... something you tried a week or so ago ... with wretched results. Not a soul wants to see you squirm or sweat meeting the parents of young learners across the state. You're not that important to these parents. Their aim is NOT to ratchet up your uncomfortableness ... it's to have you listen to their concerns about THEIR children and the fall-out from an ill-conceived program that has gone too far, too fast, and has become too intrusive.
It's a mess. Acknowledge that.
I hate to reiterate, but you matter little ... but our children mean everything. What so many parents see unfolding is a nightmare. If you think a handful of scripted forums ... bannered as "open" ... is going to solve the backlash against CC implementation, well, you've misread the tea leaves once again.
What parents want more than anything else is something they're entitled to as parents and taxpayers: a voice in how any reform movement takes shape.
Parents across the state are dealing with the fall-out of this dreadful educational lurch each and every evening in their homes. Children are drowning in school anxiety, families find their evenings descending into a sea of tears, and the usual joy of school and all it should entail has been vanished ... because the "great minds" behind Common Core can't craft clear homework directions, select age appropriate curriculum or resist the urge to burden kids with high-stakes testing at every turn. They're concerned about the massive data collection about their children ... even beyond their classroom performance ... and how that data might be utilized in the years ahead for decisions many cannot yet even imagine.
Commissioner King, I'm sure you wish this was all very fixable. That it could all be righted with a tweak here and there ... and that your reform-vision could move forward. But that is not going to happen if you choke off dialogue you might find unappetizing. But that is NOT the case. I wish it were a simple fix. It's not. And a handful of small, intimate public meeting by you and a caravan of educational body-guards is not going to solve this issue.
Back up the bus, Dr. King. Stop trying to paddle that clumsy Common Core boat against the tide of public opinion. You're wasting time, energy, and taxpayer dollars. But most of all you're sacrificing the educational health and well-being of a generation of young learners. You're poisoning their curiosity, hammering inquisitiveness, killing their enthusiasm, and most of all, their deserved childhood innocence ... all because you've hitched yourself to an ill-conceived program of reform that is inappropriate and damaging.
Do what any master educator would do in your place: listen to concerns, re-evaluate ... and then choose a route of repair and proper direction. These parents are not reform-averse. They know that schools, by their very nature, should be in a constant state of re-evaluation and reform. They get that.
What they don't get ... and never will ... is why their children must be guinea-pigged by a program that was devised for a problem that doesn't exist, with a reform that will never work, by a group of "reformers" who failed to include the most vital essentials in any such efforts ... the classroom teachers.
Stop stuffing that square peg into that round hole. Common Core is not the prescription we need here in New York ... and beyond. Want better schools? Give local boards of education all the support THEY need to do what's right for their community schools. That's the place to begin.
King, Tisch and their brothers and sisters in reform up there in Albany have their work cut out for them.
The public is awakening to the Common Core con and they're own arrogance and missteps handling the roll-out and implementation have made things even worse.
I don't think a dozen highly-controlled, highly-scripted parent forums will soothe the concern and anger of parents around this state.
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