Photo credit: Brandon Grasley (CC-By-2.0)
The same day I published my story about the Louisiana Common Core review AP published a story that indicates what the narrative is going to be.
“Louisiana parents must not be that upset at Common Core, look at how few of them participated in the public comment period.”
AP writes:
Despite controversy about Louisiana’s use of the Common Core education standards, only a few hundred people have submitted comments for a public review process of the English and math benchmarks.
The Department of Education said Monday that during the first month of an ongoing comment period, 723 individuals sent in 29,809 “pieces of feedback” on the multistate standards of what students should learn at each grade level.
Sixty percent of commenters described themselves as educators, 23 percent as parents, 7 percent as district or school administrators and the rest as members of the public or other education institutions.
I can see the Louisiana Department of Education saying, “See, only 166 parents care! We should leave this standards stuff totally up to the professionals.” With the way the public comment was set up I’m shocked that 166 participated, to expect the general public to provide comments and an alternative standard for each benchmark they disapprove of simply discourages participation.