NYC Teacher: The Common Core Standards Are Broken and Can’t Be Fixed

Intelligent letter written by a NYC SpEd teacher to Michael Mulgrew, UFT president.

Diane Ravitch's blog

This letter was written by a New York City teacher to his union president.

“I am writing as a loyal union member and as a special education teacher in a middle class ethnically diverse neighborhood who knows a lot about testing because I spent nearly two decades assessing disabled children as part of a school assessment team.until this Mayor deemed my psychometric skills to be worthless Nevertheless, under my belt is a lot of graduate level coursework as well as thousands of hours of field experience in administering and analyzing valid and reliable norm-referenced educational assessments.

“Therefore, based upon a lot of research and reading, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement that the Common Core Standards were developed by educators and that these standards represent a valid instrument to determine if a student is college or career ready.. The Common Core Standards were not developed by educators. Many…

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To UFT – Please endorse John Liu for mayor of NYC

Dear Michael Mulgrew,

I am writing to strongly urge the UFT to endorse John Liu for mayor of New York City.

I heard Liu address education issues at two different mayoral forums: one at the Brooklyn UFT office, and last night at a forum on education for parents.

Having a son in a New York City public school, John Liu sees firsthand the struggles and burdens of our city’s teachers. Unlike the current administration, he does not believe in high-stakes testing and he feels that we should be “running schools, not marketing firms.” In addition, John Liu is in the unique position of having audited the Department of Education as Comptroller of New York City. He’s identified the areas of wasteful spending, and he will reduce the Department’s pet projects which enrich outside consultants, not students.

John Liu comes across as authentic and genuine and he trusts teachers to teach. I truly believe that as mayor he will engage with teachers in an open dialogue to brainstorm real education reform for New York City schools.

Kind regards,
Katie Lapham
NYC public school teacher