Yep but for a lot of reasons. First, cost - no one thought about how to finance this beast. The online testing infrastructure is one thing. I work with school districts and they need to ensure they have enough laptops and tablets for each kid to test on (Race to Top Funds linkage) and they don’t have wifi systems strong enough to handle the load. Second, the cost of reporting requirements - you cannot believe all of the extra paperwork teachers and staff have to deal with. Planning periods to get classes ready to go are a bust - they are now being used for CC related activities. The premise of using more non-fiction and historical documents is great IMO. The danger lies in the interpretation or a school choosing material that is not factually balanced. Kids are expected to learn about and identify bias in writing - a good thing - but when I had one school buy 50 copies of Al Gore’s global warming book to be used in science class I about wanted to throw up. Most educators (not union lackies) want to do a good job and they have been tossed into a cluster. It will be interesting to see who else drops out.
I often tutor my friends kids in different levels of math. They usually come to me after struggling with something for a couple of weeks. The first question I ask them is for them to explain to me how their teacher explains how to do it. The reason they are struggling becomes quite clear in seconds. There seems to be a conspiracy even from the youngest ages (watch a 9 year old do multiplication and division, for a “wow, really?” moment) all the way through high school algebra to make sure the steps to do anything are as numerous and confusing as possible. I also tutor university level kids, and they seem to struggle in calculus because of what they didn’t learn in school.