Critics of the Common Core standards for reading and math probably think they got a boost this week when the head of the nation’s largest teachers union called for a “course correction” on how they are being implemented.

In a statement posted online Wednesday, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel wrote:

I am sure it won’t come as a surprise
to hear that in far too many states,
implementation has been completely
botched. Seven of ten teachers believe
that implementation of the standards
is going poorly in their schools.
Worse yet, teachers report that there
has been little to no attempt to allow
educators to share what’s needed to
get [Common Core State Standards]
implementation right. In fact, two
thirds of all teachers report that
they have not even been asked how to
implement these new standards in their
classrooms.

Van Roekel’s statement was timely in Kansas since it was posted on the same day the Kansas House Education Committee held a hearing on H.B. 2621, which calls for nullifying the standards in Kansas. The Kansas NEA — the state chapter of the national union — has been a vocal opponent of that bill, and generally a strong supporter of the Common Core standards.

Rob Bluey of the conservative Heritage Foundation promptly misinterpreted Van Roekel’s statement by posting on his blog that the NEA is no longer a cheerleader for the standards and that he was calling the standards themselves “botched.”

That column, in turn, has since been tweeted and re-tweeted throughout the social media universe to the point where, by now, it’s probably accepted wisdom — at least among people who don’t bother to follow the original links — that the NEA is now a Common Core opponent.

That, however, is not the case. As Van Roekel goes on to say:

It would be simpler just
to listen to the detractors from the
left and the right who oppose the
standards. But scuttling these
standards will simply return us to the
failed days of No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), where rote memorization and
bubble tests drove teaching and
learning. NEA members don’t want to
go backward; we know that won’t help
students. Instead, we want states to
make a strong course correction and
move forward.

The thing that most concerns teachers unions — and probably doesn’t concern the Heritage Foundation or other conservative groups — boils down to one thing: teacher evaluations.

Under terms of federal waivers from No Child Left Behind that most states have received, not to mention legislation enacted in many states, teachers throughout the country are now being evaluated, at least in some part, based on how wells their students are performing on standardized tests.

Most authorities agree that the Common Core standards are tougher, more rigorous standards. So in states like New York and Maryland, where tests have been implemented before the curriculum was fully developed and teachers were fully trained in them, test scores immediately plummeted, leading to widespread public backlash from both parents and educators.

But that hasn’t been the case in Kansas, where the state Department of Education is now seeking to delay its new teacher evaluation scheme to give time for the Common Core standards to set in, much to the satisfaction of Kansas NEA President Karen Godfrey.

“The implementation hasn’t been mishandled on a state level in Kansas, in our opinion,” Godfrey said in an email to the Journal-World. “In some districts, there could be improvements, and teachers should have more voice in how it’s implemented in those districts. Our state has also delayed accountability for the assessments for teachers, which is helpful as we transition. The state department has been very clear that the assessments are only a part of the measure of student growth and has resisted demanding a specific level of importance for the tests for all districts. Teachers and districts will have more control under our State Department’s plan.”