NEA Affirms Endorsement of Common Core

Although the National Education Association has been on board for Common Core State Standards since 2009-10, its Representative Assembly of delegates recently re-affirmed the organization's support with adoption of Business Item A, requiring, as Stephen Sawchuck reports for EdWeek, the “NEA to support and guide affiliates, parent organizations, and community stakeholders in advocating, and transitioning to, the Common Core State Standards.”

While probably the NEA's strongest statement yet in support of CCSS, it also approved an item requiring the union to join with the American Federation of Teachers calling for a moratorium on the outcomes linked to Common Core assessments. As Sawchuck puts it, “it would limit consequences to 'informing instruction; and would support only tests that are developed locally.” This would effectively eliminate the standardized tests being developed by the two federally funded Common Core assessment consortia, Smarter Balanced and PARCC.

The NEA's home page links to an article from January by Dennis Van Roekel titled Getting to the Core of Common Core. Tellingly, the subtitle is Change is hard – not necessarily bad. That truth seems to be the underlying factor in the NEA's support of – and uneasiness with – Common Core.

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