CCSS, just as the dozens of standards movements before them, discount the need to confront, to ask, to re-imagine because standards are an act of authoritarian mandates. “Who decides” is rendered unnecessary, and the curriculum becomes a faux-neutral set of content that teachers must implement and students must acquire so that the ultimate faux-neutral device can be implemented—high-stakes testing.
“Chant,” “recite,” “ubiquitous,” “relentless,” “troop”—these are the bedrocks of a standards-driven school environment, but this is indoctrination, not education—whether the standard is character or curriculum.
What standards [sic] like these do is impose a regimen from the top that everyone must follow.
what we have decided is important.
the stuff we left out is not.
standards [sic] discourage creative development of competing approaches that are better thought through, that are more in line with what is now known about the domains covered and about pedagogy in those domains.
hamstring textbook writers, curriculum developers, and teachers, forcing them to address topics at random that are not part of a more carefully conceived overall learning progression.