Parents Across Rhode Island

Click here to edit subtitle


T he following is testimony submitted to the Rhode Island General Assembly in support of legislation protecting students from the harmful and negative effects of high stakes testing and the rush to implement the Common Core standards with it's accompanying tests.  For additional testimonies, please return to

Testimony: Sheila Ress e ger

Thank you for giving concerned Rhode Islanders this opportunity to share our views on the Common Core State (sic) Standards and the PARCC testing. (I use (sic) because the standards were not developed by the states, as claimed.)  I am writing in support of Rep. Gregg Amore’s bill H 7095, a bill to create a task force to investigate the Common Core and accompanying testing, hold public hearings, and pause the high-stakes PARCC testing for one year. My name is Sheila Berman Resseger. The Health, Education, and Welfare Committee has been hearing about many serious concerns about these standards and tests, on many fronts. I want to focus on the premise for the English Language Arts standards, and why it is misguided. I was a teacher at the RI School for the Deaf, teaching English Language Arts through an introduction to Latin and Roman Civilization, and teaching developmental reading and writing to many of our students who were immigrants from non-English speaking countries, until retiring in 2011. I currently volunteer in an 8th grade English classroom of ELL students in a Providence middle school, and I see firsthand the poor quality and inappropriateness of the Common Core reading materials provided for teachers to use. (The particular text is published by Pearson, one of the key conglomerates producing materials for the Common Core and associated testing.)

When I first heard David Coleman, the mastermind of the Common Core ELA standards, speak via a YouTube video, I found myself agreeing with him on several points. He wanted students to do a close reading of text, rather than answer questions about the text without reference to it. He also wanted them to argue from evidence collected from a written text, rather than from their opinions. So far, so good. I had been doing that for decades and didn’t need him to tell me that. What he said next, which has become an infamous quote, shocked me. From this one sentence (along with extensive reading about the Common Core, its assumptions and its implications for teaching and learning), I realized the total inadequacy of these standards. He said, “When you’re in the adult world, no one gives a sh-t what you think or feel.” (He did not bleep his choice of word.) To me, this sums up the basis for the ELA standards—for students to become functionaries in a technocratic society in the service of global corporate interests. That may seem like reading a lot into one sentence, but here are some other clues:


The CCSS, while not a curriculum, was always intended to align with assessments. Those assessments would then be aligned with curriculum—a vicious circle. The proponents of the CCSS, including David Coleman, have promulgated exemplar lessons that illustrate the best of teaching to the standards. One exemplar lesson, for an English teacher to use, is a close reading of the Gettysburg address. The lesson is to be presented with no background information whatsoever—not who Lincoln was, the significance of Gettysburg, or of the Civil War. This is to ensure that the students are all on a level playing field, and that they will read the text closely! Setting aside that any knowledgeable and experienced English teacher will always provide context for a text, there is never a level playing field among a group of students. Some will have much background information at their disposal, while others will have virtually none. The irony of this approach is that Lincoln’s powerful speech was so moving and memorable precisely because it reflected his thoughts and feelings on a devastating war, one that he was presiding over.


Where did this idea of a close reading of text come from? Is it the only and best approach to teaching the English Language Arts? According to Darcy Pattison in What is Common Core? :


“The practice of ‘close reading’ and emphasis on the self-contained text are basic principles of ‘New Criticism’ which was developed about the middle of the last century, in the 1950-60s.” Since that time, many types of literary criticism have been available: “biographical criticism, reader-response criticism, socialist criticism, structuralism, new historicism and so on.”She goes on to say that students need “a wider understanding of English as a subject and a deeper understanding of the texts they are studying.”

In one of his last public speeches, given at the dedication to the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, President John F. Kennedy said: “’I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.’”


The ELA Common Core standards purport to lead to students’ becoming “college and career ready.” The guiding principle is that this readiness is readiness to successfully compete for a job in the global marketplace, considered in terms of rapidly evolving technology, Big Data, and multi-national corporations. There is virtually no consideration of developing artists, playwrights, musicians, or social critics, or any other of a myriad of vocations vital to a diverse democracy.


I think that the worst flaw of the CC$$ for ELA is that the standards do not allow for teachers to encourage students to value and express their own stories and viewpoints. Without respect for the students' heritage, strengths, interests, and needs, there can be no trust or mutual respect, and the learning that is supposed to be happening languishes. This is inexcusable. If classroom teachers had been consulted in the development of the standards, which they were not, this anti-humanistic stance of technocratic academics devoid of heart would never have seen the light of day.


The other main tenet of the CC$$ for ELA has to do with text complexity. The progression of text complexity from grade to grade is inexorable under this agenda. Students are mandated to progress one year’s worth of complexity every year. While this may seem reasonable on first reading, it becomes an impossibility when given some thought. One of the highly recognized failures of the No Child Left Behind Act was due to the impossibility of all students becoming proficient in ELA and math by 2014. Schools were held accountable to this impossibility, and harsh sanctions were placed on them because of it. One of the key reasons that many states adopted the Common Core (other than for Race to the Top money), was to get a waiver from these NCLB mandates. Yet what the Common Core ELA standards demand is even more inflexible.


Students come to school with an array of experiences and learning needs. Again, according to Darcy Pattison: “Before, the guidelines for fourth grade reading levels were just guidelines. A fourth grader might actually read on a second grade level and still pass classes. With the new emphasis, teachers are required to focus on pulling up reading scores to required levels.” Again, this sounds reasonable, until you think it through. The Common Core promotes the idea that by forcing students to read material that is at their frustration level over and over, eventually they will understand it. What happens to IEP or ELL students who are reading several or more grade levels below their grade in school? Their teachers have no choice but to attempt to have them read at an inappropriate level, and then watch them suffer through the PARCC testing, which is given at the student’s grade level rather than the level at which they can function independently. This is a recipe for failure.


This approach goes against the most fundamental learning needs of these students. An enlightened and experienced teacher will challenge the student within the student’s zone of proximal development. In other words, the well-trained and knowledgeable teacher uses effective diagnostic measures to ascertain the student’s actual independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels, and then designs curriculum and tasks to maximize the student’s progress from the current level. This cannot be accomplished using materials with an arbitrary level of complexity beyond the students’ current capabilities.


The Common Core State (sic) Standards were not written by classroom teachers, but were written primarily by Achieve, Inc. and employees of the College Board/ACT/SAT. What this elite group developed behind closed doors was a set of K-12 standards based on what they assumed a high school senior would need to know and be able to do in order to enter a post-secondary program without needing remediation. The standards were then back-mapped to the youngest learners. There was no consideration given to the developmental needs of students or to their special learning difficulties. All students are to progress the same amount, to the same degree, at the same pace. Further, these standards are not a work in progress, since they are copyrighted and cannot be modified.


All of the high sounding rhetoric spouted by the federal Department of Education and the RI Department of Education and Board of Education about equally high expectations for all, and the civil rights issue of our time, is belied by the reality of inappropriate, inflexible, and heartless instruction that demoralizes teachers, students, and parents, and puts at risk an entire generation of our country’s children. At the very least, we need to hit the pause button and investigate what is happening and is about to happen if we heedlessly continue on this course. Please support and pass Rep. Amore’s bill H 7095. Thank you for your consideration of my concerns.

Sheila Resseger, M.A.

Retired teacher

Rhode Island School for the Deaf

February 26, 2014