◼ In a major surprise, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the country’s second-largest teachers union, opened its biannual convention Friday by announcing a step back from its support for Common Core education standards. - Blake Neff/Daily Caller
The group, gathering in Los Angeles, announced that it will now provide monetary grants from its Innovation Fund for teachers who want to critique the standards or even write entirely new ones themselves.
The AFT’s executive council is also introducing a resolution, to be voted on at the convention, which would declare that the standards had noble intentions but have fallen short due to outside meddling and an inordinate focus on standardized tests....eachers-union-abruptly-breaks-rank-on-common-core/#ixzz37JX85E4n...
Common Core has aroused its most notable opposition on the right from activists who claim the multistate standards constitute a federal takeover of education and object to particular components of the standards.
However, it has also seen increasing opposition on the left as well, particularly from a new faction of almost 100,000 left-wing teachers calling themselves the Badass Teachers Association, many of whose members are also a part of AFT. Such teachers typically object to how the standards further entrench the role of standardized tests in education and oppose using such tests to implement merit pay or fire teachers for alleged ineffectiveness....
