Will Common Core kill early childhood education?

Here's my other problem with Common Core Standards -- besides the testing madness associated with it. In the hands of ed bureaucrats, corporate reformers and Pearson testing profiteers CCS could very well mean death to good early childhood education. Case in point -- New York City schools under the rule of Mayor Bloomberg.

Susan Edelman, writing in Monday's N.Y. Post ("Playtime’s over, kindergartners") reports:

The city has adopted national standards called the Common Core, which dramatically raise the bar on what kids in grades K through 12 should know. The jargon is new, too. Teachers rate each student’s performance as “novice,” “apprentice,” “practitioner” or “expert.” In a kindergarten class in Red Hook, Brooklyn, three children broke down and sobbed on separate days last week, another teacher told The Post.

When one girl cried, “I can’t do it,” classmates rubbed her back, telling her, “That’s OK.” “This is causing a lot of anxiety,” the teacher said. “Kindergarten should be happy and playful. It should be art and dancing and singing and learning how to take turns. Instead, it’s frustrating and disheartening.”

Diane Ravitch blogs:

 There is growing evidence that the Common Core standards are absurd in the early grades. They require a level of academic learning that is developmentally inappropriate. Little children need time to pay. Play is their work. In play, they learn to share and to count, to communicate, to use language appropriately, and to figure things out.

I know the horse is already out of the barn on CCS. Just saying...