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[quote=Anonymous]"The standards don't allow enough flexibility for students who learn differently."

Here's a great article that details how devastating Common Core is for those with special needs

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-common-core-is-tough-on-kids-with-special-needs/283973/

In a recent discussion board thread on reading comprehension challenges in autism, a special-education teacher commented that her students can’t understand the assigned reading passages. “[b]When I complained, I was told that I could add extra support, but not actually change the passages,” she wrote. “It is truly sad to see my students’ frustration.”[/b]

Why must this teacher’s students contend with passages that are too complex for them to understand? She attributes this inflexibility to the Common Core, new standards—created in 2009 by a group of education professionals, none of them K-12 classroom teachers or special-education experts—that have been adopted by 45 states. [b]Though most Common Core goals are abstract and schematic, collectively they constitute a one-size fits-all approach that, in practice, has severely straightjacketed America’s special-needs students.[/b]

She’s echoing the concerns of dozens of other special-education teachers I’ve spoken with, most of whom have already gotten the message from their supervisors or superiors th[b]at they must adhere to the standards and give all their students the designated grade-level assignments.[/b]

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And now [b]that this general curriculum is being shaped by dozens of grade-specific Common Core standards[/b], and that teachers (including special-ed teachers) are increasingly expected to align each day’s lesson with one or more of these standards, t[b]here’s even less room for remediation or acceleration.
[/b]

As additional Common Core documents explain,[b] the texts for the different grade levels must be at a certain grade-appropriate level of verbal complexity.[/b] The Common Core Myths vs. Facts page notes, “the Standards require certain critical content for all students, including… America’s Founding Documents, foundational American literature, and Shakespeare.” And an appendix explains that sample texts, which include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for eighth grade, “exemplify the level of complexity and quality that the Standards require all students in a given grade band to engage with.” So, while one might supplement a text, say, with glossaries and storyboards, [b]one can’t adjust the text itself to match the student’s reading level[/b].

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