As a veteran educator with 27 years of experience in public schools, I stand with nearly 75 percent of our teachers, hoping that the House Education Committee will strike down six bills seeking to dismantle Louisiana's Common Core standards.
I teach special-needs students, who in many ways demand more individual attention than most Louisiana children in order to succeed academically. Still, these standards have been instrumental to enhancing their classroom experience, fostering a better learning environment that encourages inclusion and self-esteem to produce desired outcomes.
Common Core is effective because it shifts emphasis away from rote memorization and toward problem-solving through inference, educated prediction, analysis and comparison.
Common Core will succeed where our former K-12 system failed. Our children currently rank 47th in reading and 49th in math nationally, and in 2013, fewer than 21 percent of eighth-graders met math proficiency while only 23 percent of fourth-graders met reading proficiency. Adopting the Common Core was our commitment to raising our education standards. Louisiana simply cannot afford to turn back now.
That's why I stand with Education Committee Chairman Stephen Carter and others who understand that Common Core is good for our state and must be implemented.