Given that Governor Margaret Wood Hassan has vetoed Senator Kevin Avard’s bill (SB101) preventing the State Board or Department of Education from requiring local school districts to adopt the Common Core national education standards and given that the Senate has not determined whether or not it will undertake an override vote, we publish the unedited testimony of veteran teacher Diane Sekula in the hopes of motivating the senate to put all its members on record in favor of or against local control.  NB:  All emphasis is in the original.  ~Publis

A statement from Diane Sekula, experienced educator and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Moldova, ’99-10):

 
I have been a teacher for well over a decade and this spring, I will turn in my resignation because of Common Core and its associated data collection through SBAC and other means.
 
 
Common Core is substandard and the required data collection highly UNETHICAL. It is causing stress amongst students, teachers, and parents alike and has taken much joy out of teaching and learning.
 
I have witnessed extreme anxiety and tears from both teachers and students because of the pressure, confusion and uncertainty surrounding Common Core and SBAC Testing. 
 
When I taught in the Soviet Union as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1999-2001, I was told by our federal government to help teachers design lessons that included opportunities for creativity and innovation as this was not done under Soviet Rule. Under Soviet Rule testing was everything and you were labeled. Labels work for jars of poison BUT NOT FOR CHILDREN OR DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES.  Our ability to nurture individual dreams encourage innovation is one of the things that makes the United States better than socialized countries in many ways.
 
The Common Core is not what it was sold as. 
 
It encourages uniformity through one-size-fits-all standards at the cost of individuality, individual thinking and individual differences. 
 
 The Derryfield School has referred to it as INFERIOR. 
 
 It is not used at Thomas Hassan’s school, Philips Exeter. 
 
The way this is going, public school children will be trained as workers while those who can afford it will get a true education. 
 
New Hampshire children, families and teachers deserve better than Common Core.