Posted on 02/27/2014 7:54:53 AM PST by Academiadotorg
One of the fascinating things about journalism is looking at the factual data that both sides of a controversy agree on and finding that the facts support the critics’ viewpoints.
For example, the Thomas Fordham Institute has been, more or less, supportive of the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms. Nevertheless, in their progress report on it, the relatively right-of-center think tank paints a rather dismal picture of CC2014:
“Teachers and principals are the primary faces and voices of the Common Core standards in their communities; “Implementation works best when district and school leaders lock onto the Common Core standards as the linchpin of instruction, professional learning, and accountability in their buildings “In the absence of externally vetted, high-quality Common Core materials, districts are striving—with mixed success—to devise their own “The scramble to deliver quality CCSS-aligned professional development to all who need it is as crucial and (so far) as patchy as the quest for suitable curriculum materials “The lack of aligned assessments will make effective implementation of the Common Core challenging for another year.”
Clearly, the Fordham Institute is trying to put lipstick on…”In short, districts are in the near-impossible situation of operationalizing new standards before high-quality curriculum and tests aligned to them are finished,” the Institute concludes. “Yet the clock is ticking, and the new tests and truly aligned textbooks and other materials are forthcoming. Today’s implementation is a bit like spring training, a time when focusing on the fundamentals, teamwork, and steady improvement is more important than the score.”
Meanwhile, in her syndicated column, attorney, author and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly provides some useful background on CC. “Achieve Inc. started implementation of Common Core with 13 states, but a national curriculum was still the goal, and a congressional debate about that would have been a political risk,” Schlafly writes. “So the Common Core advocates bypassed most elected officials, went straight to each state department of education, and by 2009, 35 state curriculums had aligned with Common Core.”
“Common Core advocates then announced that ‘standards’ had been developed ‘in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts … to prepare our children for college and the workforce.’ By 2011, 45 states signed up even though the final draft of the standards was not yet available and they had never been field tested.”
“Still careful to skirt the laws barring federal control of curriculum, Education Secretary Arne Duncan used federal funds to bait the states to align with Common Core by offering grants from the federally funded Race to the Top program.”
“The Common Core promoters, whose goal is a national curriculum for all U.S. children despite laws prohibiting the government from requiring it, used the clever device of copyrighting the standards by a non-government organization, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). That enables Common Core advocates to force uniform national standards while claiming that the laws prohibiting federal control of curriculum are not violated.”
“No one may copy or reprint the standards without permission, and states that sign on to Common Core may not change or modify the standards. The license agreement that states must sign in order to use Common Core states: ‘NGA/CCSSO shall be acknowledged as the sole owners and developers of the Common Core State Standards.’”
“Still careful to skirt the laws barring federal control of curriculum, Education Secretary Arne Duncan used federal funds to bait the states to align with Common Core by offering grants from the federally funded Race to the Top program.”
Back in the stone age, when dinosaurs roamed the planet, I was in the (state winning HS debate team). The topic one year was “Federal Aid to Education”. Being a typical naive child of the ‘60s, I eagerly chose the “affirmative” side, thinking that government controlling all education was good. The prime negative tactic was to state that when the government started feeding money to the system, it would take control - permanently.
At that time, I thought the idea silly. Now, however, having achieved a solid education in reality, I realize just how wrong the affirmative side was.
A prime undeniable truth is that a very large majority of people in our gubmit are just not very smart.
At all.
And, a good percentage of those are just not very moral.
At all.
I’ll hire a good home-schooled child over a Harvard grad any day.
After all, Harvard admitted the Kennedys...and Obama.
Think about that...and think about their “standards”.
I have little or no respect for those who send their children to public school in the US today. They are either ignorant, lazy or narcissistic.
bump for later
Any experts on what these might be?
I should temper that a bit. More accurately, I see them as George Zimmerman saw Trayvon Martin. I profile them. They may be struggling just to make ends meet just to eat and do not have the time to homeschool. But more often than not, it is just what our culture has become. And it is already biting us as these kids hit adulthood. Give it another ten years, if we even have that long.
Or not financially able in this economy. Private school isn’t cheap. I have had to make several adjustments to make it happen. No retirement for me until I am on a walker.
I would also say that in a rural area there may not be one.
No need. I did temper my response somewhat. I will add that often they are simply ignorant of the options available. I live in an area so rural that I have to get my internet from satellite. But I still have full acess to khanacademy.org and MIT, all of which is absolutely free and, frankly, better than any public school.
i.e. the only excuse for sending your kids to public school is that both parents absolutely have to work outside the home just to put food in the kids mouths.
love your freep name. do you include charter schools in that?
do you include charter schools in that?
Every case is unique, but my point really is that people do not realize the damage they are doing to their kids by sending them to public schools - with rare exception.
I’m talking about real and mesurable harm.
Phyllis laid those out in her column as well, as only she can:
“Ever since Congress began pouring federal tax dollars into public schools, parents have been solicitous to have Congress write into law a prohibition against the federal government writing curriculum or lesson plans, or imposing a uniform national curriculum. Parents want those decisions made at the local level by local school boards which are, or should be, subject to the watchful eyes of local citizens and parents.
Parents are supported in this view by the U.S. Constitution which gives the federal government no power over education. Here is some of the repetitive language included in federal school appropriation laws.
The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the first federal attempt to regulate and finance schools, stated: “Nothing in this act” shall authorize any federal official to “mandate, direct, or control” school curriculum. The 1970 General Education Provisions Act stipulates that “no provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any” federal agency or official “to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction or selection of instructional materials by any” school system.
The 1979 law that created the Department of Education forbids it to exercise “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school system. The amended Elementary and Secondary Education Act reiterates that no Education Department funds “may be used … to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in” grades K-12.
no retirement for me on this side of the grass.
Thanks for the information.
Do these laws not then preclude any notion of Common Core? It would seem that CC is unlawful.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/27/all-candidates-fail-liberia-university-test
all 25,000 applicants fail entrance exams
at least they admit it.
“...the only excuse for sending your kids to public school is that both parents absolutely have to work outside the home just to put food in the kids mouths.”
There are other reasons. http://basisschools.org/
Hard to replicate that success at home.
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