Review Of Linda Darling-Hammond´s The Right To Learn

606 Words3 Pages

In her book, The Right to Learn, Linda Darling-Hammond challenges everyone to understand that all students have the right to learn. Hammond advocates that teachers reach all students while meeting the present day educational demands, and believes this to be a necessity. One may ask what these educational needs are and what is driving them. Currently, New Jersey among other states across the country are implementing the Common Core Standards and evaluating successful education through PARCC testing. This was driven by current societal issues and seemed to be an answer to help improve outcomes for our country’s students.
Prior to the development of curriculum based off of the Common Core Standards, the curriculum was written based upon New Jersey’s Standards. When district’s utilized the NJ Standards it provided them with more flexibility to develop meaningful and engaging curriculum. The curriculum that needed to be developed for the Common Core not only changed the materials chosen for the curriculum, but the strategies and methods of teaching. The influence of these new standards impacts all levels of curriculum writing. Educators writing the new curriculum need to be specific about each and every step in the learning process due to the specific strategies required by Common Core. In addition, the objectives of school districts has …show more content…

The Common Core does not take into account the innate needs of students in general, the aims of education, or the needs of a particular community. Many educators feel that the days when, “curriculum developers state the aims of education and their philosophical and psychological principles” (Olivia, 2013) are long gone. Ignoring the specific needs of students and a community can be deemed a fatal flaw of the Common Core