State of New Jersey Standards

The website for the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards was informative and I found it rather simple to navigate throughout the site. I read the introduction and I had the feeling that the State was presenting its program in a different perspective than that of the way it is being presented to the educational systems and we, the educators are certainly not receiving this message in a positive tone. I am not a proponent of standardized testing, but I do believe in an organized curriculum, which connects the students to useful applications. The standards concept was a political response to a potentially failing public education system. Had educators and business people (who are looking for future employees) put their heads together and did a "wants and needs assessment"then developed a program that met these wants and needs, and then implemented this program, we might just have a plan that works.
Being a math teacher, I spent more time with the math standards and found the website had a nice clear and concise representation of the standards. The unrealistic component of the "standards" is that all students will be able to have proficiency in these areas. Students develop at different rates and not all children have the same ability level. Yes,challenge every student, but not every student can meet all of the challenges.