Letters: Contrasting on Common Core

Re “In defense of Common Core,” Editorial, March 13

The Obama administration’s attempt to meddle in public education has been a failure. The switch to Common Core cannot be an administration victory over the conservative contingent in Congress because, as it has been articulated many times over, the federal government has no business in education. (Read that old document called the Constitution, Amendment 10.)

You cite the numerous groups that are leading opposition to Common Core, and in fact you also voice minor opposition to many facets of this ill-conceived grand illusion of a “fix” to education once and for all. There is no “cure-all” because education is delivered by people, to people and generally administered by other people with little appreciation that the teachers and students are individuals who teach and learn differently.

One size has never fit “all.”

Barry J. Hildebrand

Rancho Palos Verdes

Good teachers get comfortable with their routine over time. What they do in class day after day, year after year, becomes second nature. And change is not a welcome thing.

But what if the change makes their craft easier? And what if it makes their students learn more and learn better?

Common Core is an opportunity to create critical thinkers in the classroom. For teachers who have been around since the 1970s and are acquainted with the word “inquiry,” Common Core will not be so new.

Common Core presents an opportunity to put students onstage and shift the responsibility of learning to their shoulders. Common Core is an opportunity for the teacher to truly become a facilitator of learning.

In social studies classrooms, teachers will be transformed from information givers to question askers. With proper questioning, students can move to the higher levels of evaluation and synthesis.

Michael Pazeian

Garden Grove

I would like to offer a brief sidebar to the debate over Common Core from the viewpoint of a parent in a high-performance district in Orange County:

I agree that the concept behind Common Core — going deeper into fewer topics — has merit. However, the timing for adopting this philosophy is unfortunate, especially here in California, where we have high class sizes.

Our teachers are fantastic, but it’s extremely challenging to achieve depth of learning when you’ve got 35 students. Class size still matters.

Barbara Correa

Laguna Niguel

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