Don’t waste your precious dollars on the numerous Common Core products and services purport to help with your children’s college and career readiness. A better bet is on the people in your schools – spend the money on teachers and school leaders – excite them with opportunities and support for their innovation, inspire them with high quality professional development programs, minimize the bureaucratic burden placed on them, reduce their class sizes, and give them time to learn and collaborate with their colleagues.
Yong Zhao via http://zhaolearning.com/2012/06/17/common-sense-vs-common-core-how-to-minimize-the-damages-of-the-common-core
Totally agree with your post, I’m a parent who wants the best education for my kids and make sure that I work hard and save for that education.
One thing I’m not seeing in the Common Core discussion is the value of having a school media specialist/librarian or a strong connection to the local public library. The language arts portions of the Core have a strong focus on high quality nonfiction texts, and having a librarian either nearby or on staff is a powerful way to make these books, websites, databases, etc. accessible to teachers and students. I wish librarians had more a voice in the conversation. We have a lot to offer, both as in-school teacher librarians and local public librarians.