Well-known standup comedian and screenwriter Louis C.K. decided to tweet about his daughters’ Common Core woes last night. In a sequence of 140-character rants — some of them accompanied by pictures — Louis C.K. complained about their difficulty and schools’ growing obsession with standardized testing over creative learning. His daughters are students in a New York City public school.
One highlight:
It’s this massive stressball that hangs over the whole school. The kids teachers trying to adapt to these badly written notions.
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
The controversial set of universal math and English language arts standards, which has been adopted in Hawaii and another 44 states, has enjoyed its fair share of flack, from those who say the program is part of a federal effort to infiltrate public schools to those who say the standards are too challenging for students and too rigid for teachers.
The rollout has been bumpy as teachers learn to comply with the new expectations and incorporate the new testing and requirements that come along with them. And, as Louis C.K. demonstrates, it’s causing headaches for parents, too.
Common Core was implemented at all Hawaii’s public schools this academic year. The new test that will be used to assess whether students are meeting this standards goes into effect next school year.
Photo: Louis C.K. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
— Alia Wong
