By Jeffrey Villar

Lively debate on issues of importance to Connecticut citizens is essential to a strong democracy. Unfortunately, the debate around Common Core has been rife with misinformation, and the majority of criticisms from detractors are not based on fact.  While I understand that the opposition has a point of view, I believe it is important to refute arguments that are simply not true, especially in defense of standards intended to make our children’s education more rigorous and competitive…

Take, for instance, an Op-Ed published in the CT Mirror on Oct. 6 titled “Common Core takes the joy out of teaching.” The Op-Ed argues that classroom teachers were “deliberately excluded” from the process of developing the standards. This is blatantly untrue.

In the development of the Common Core, teachers served on the Work Groups and Feedback Groups for the standards; then, feedback from teachers was collected by organizations such as the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and theNational Council of Teachers of English; then, state teams—including teachers—provided further feedback on the draft of the standards. Finally, teachers participated in two public comment periods, which had over 10,000 comments.

It just isn’t true that teachers weren’t participants in the process of developing the Common Core.

The Op-Ed also suggests that the assessments aligned with the Common Core will drastically increase the amount of time spent on testing, and the impact of testing. This is also untrue.

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As a father, an educator, and a citizen of Connecticut, I am frustrated by the spreading of misinformation about Common Core. I hope you are too.

Read the full opinion here.