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Teachers Unions Threaten Common Core Implementation
5/12/14 | Huffington Post
Behind the Headline
Common Core: Teachers’ Unions Think Again
2/24/2014 | Education Next blog
The Washington Post editorial board notes that teachers unions are beginning to push back against the Common Core standards in several states. The Chicago Teachers Union last week voted to oppose the Common Core standards. It will urge its teachers to join the opposition to the standards and lobby the state board of education to drop the standards. In New York the teachers union has withdrawn its support for the standards. In Tennessee the union got the legislature to approve a delay in rolling out new tests aligned with the standards.
The Post argues that what the unions are really objecting to is the use of results from the new tests as a factor in teacher evaluations. The editorial concludes
The AFT and NEA were among the biggest supporters of the Common Core. They helped make the case for more rigorous standards and invested in the development of aligned curriculum and teaching tools. Surveys show teachers still support the effort. Will their leaders now be complicit with the tea party in sabotaging the Common Core, or will they help make the standards a success?
Rick Hess blogged for Ed Next about early signs of teachers union opposition to the Common Core earlier this year. He warned
Teachers and teachers’-union leaders like the fact that it will be easier to share curricula and lesson plans, that materials and tests will be portable across state lines, and that they’ll have a more common professional language. And many regard the standards as clearer or more coherent than their state’s old standards. This doesn’t mean, though, that they’ve ever supported the actual tests, the particular materials that would be introduced, the specific recommendations for classroom instruction, or the use of the resulting test results for school accountability or teacher evaluation.
-Education Next
