Peter Rawitsch has been teaching early childhood education for 35 years. He was selected by the state of New York to participate on a committee reviewing the state standards. His post was published by the Albany Times Union and reposted on Susan Ochshorn’s blog. I think you will enjoy reading his commentary, and I am reposting it here.

Peter described how the group for Pre-K-grade 12 met and were briefed. Then they broke into sections.

The Common Core State Standards were adopted by the New York State Regents in 2011. Its original group of authors did not include any early childhood experts. If it had, it would have started with kindergarten and progressed forward, instead of starting with 12th grade and mapping backward. It would have acknowledged that children learn and develop at different rates, which is much better reflected by a learning continuum and not inflexible of end-of-year benchmarks…