Grading the Common Core: No Teaching Experience Required

The new academic standards known as the Common Core emphasize critical thinking, complex problem-solving and writing skills, and put less stock in rote learning and memorization. So the standardized tests given in most states this year required fewer multiple choice questions and far more writing on topics like this one posed to elementary school students: Read a passage from a novel written in the first person, and a poem written in the third person, and describe how the poem might change if it were written in the first person.

—Common Core emphasize critical thinking, complex problem-solving...—

BS. Common Core is designed to mold the kids into good little worker bees for the NWO. And that doesn’t happen if the kids think critically or can solve problems, much less complex ones.

It’s also a data-mining tool to take the kids away from their parents and even take the ‘problem’ parents out of society, where they won’t expose the fascist regime.

Sorry NYT, no sale.

and describe how the poem might change if it were written in the first person

OOO! OOO! Pick me!

It would have a lot more “I’s” in it. [Or “eyes”...I forget but I tried...so it has to be right...}

Common Core is designed to:

1. Nationalize curriculum, academic terminology and testing, for elementary, secondary, and college/graduate education.

2. Lower students test scores.

3. Lower testing outcomes for teachers.

4. The lower test scores then “create” the basis for “evidence” that more federal control is required, and, that all school teachers, both public and private, must have “national” accredation and national licensure, rather than through the individual states. In other words, all teachers will have to be licensed by the federal government, not the states or local communities - when all this finally occurs - the federal government will be openly in complete control of all education, both public and private.

I was at a meeting where a local administrator said that the goal was “a guide to the side, instead of a sage on the stage,” which is pretty much what you said.

Here in Missouri, they tried to get rid of the “fill in the bubble” testing when they adopted what was called the M.A.P. test. We were told that unlike other test reforms, this would be “forever”. Problem was, how do you grade all of those free-response answers?

The testing company’s plan was to hire out-of-work college graduates who would be “trained” to grade the students’ tests somewhere in California (where unemployed college grads were apparently thick on the ground). Each test question response was to be scanned so that two graders would be able to independently stare at a monitor and assign a score to a response. Students were warned that anything outside of the response box would never been seen and thus unscored. If the scores differed, a third scorer would weigh in.

Of course it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that while this awkward system might work for one school’s test results, but not for every 3–11th graders in a whole state. The costs for grading the tests were so high, that the state reverted to multiple choice exams. It didn’t really matter since the downward trend of students’ scores continued downward.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.