You have until April 2nd to comment on the Common Core Standards in Reading and Math. April 1st might be an appropriate day. According to Ed Week, over 2,000 people have already taken the time to go to www.corestandards.org and navigate the comment section to record comments. Your voice matters, even if changes to the K–3 level at the core of the common core do not occur.

If you want to see the mounting concern in the early childhood community, go to www.allianceforchildhood.org.

Ed Miller from the Alliance just emailed this deeply moving note from highly respected educator and author Diane Levin of Boston:

You have mobilized a powerful group and given us a way to express our concerns about the deeply misguided route down which the government is currently taking early childhood education.

I feel this more strongly now than ever having just returned from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I took Wheelock students on a service learning program looking at the reconciliation efforts currently under way in schools. My students, all of whom will be working with children and families in some way when they graduate, commented over and over again on their amazement at how self-regulated, engaged, and competent the children were, beginning as young as 3. They voiced disbelief when they saw approximately 75 children ages 5 and 6 on an asphalt playground with no equipment or play materials except for chalk, happily playing games and running around for a half hour with not one obvious instance of adult intervention needed. They saw children in the classroom busily doing diverse activities, including writing and drawing, helping and sharing their activities with each other, as the teacher went around the room working with individuals. Discussing their observations with teachers, my students were surprised to learn that the new curriculum for Northern Ireland had an increased focus on promoting play in the early grades. The teachers were eagerly embracing this shift.

Why do Northern Ireland’s educational policymakers seem to understand young children’s needs so well, while U.S. policymakers are so wrong-headed? One key factor is that policymakers in Northern Ireland listen to early childhood educators when determining educational policy. U.S. policymakers do not. Now more than ever I believe that our children are doomed to miseducation and worse if policymakers here don’t learn to listen to the voices of those best trained to promote the well-being and education of young children. The policy statement you have forged, which represents the voices of leading early childhood educators in the U.S., is our best hope of getting policymakers to reverse their current disastrous course.

I agree. The debate over educational standards is really part of the national health care debate. This is about the social and mental health of our youngest. No one can argue with the value of rigorous academic standards, but we have seen in repeated cycles in the last fifty years the failure of thinking that by pushing these standards down to begin at earlier and earlier ages we will improve achievement and graduation rates in our nation’s schools.

What do you think?