Mercedes Schneider Rips CCSS in Five Minutes

I don't reblog a lot of other people's stuff here, mostly because I am a small, low rung on the edublog ladder, and if you're reading me, you've probably read most of what I have. But if I can add just five more views to this video, I've served a useful purpose today.

Mercedes Schneider is one of my teacher heroines. We've never met, but she's taught me a ton about what is really going on, and she's taught me a lot about how to be an activist-writer while still serving your students in a classroom.

At last weekend's Network for Public Education conference, she sat on a panel about CCSS and used her five minutes to hit many of the same fatal flaws that I hate in CCSS. Most of all, the intent to completely cut my professional classroom teacher I'm-actually-standing-in-front-of-these-live-human-students judgment out of the educational loop. I also recognize the notion that a classroom teacher's role now includes serving as a buffer between students and what the Powers That Be want to inflict on them.

So take five minutes and listen to what a passionate fan of public education and teaching the way it was meant to be has to say.