Posted on 06/10/2014 12:36:36 PM PDT by Kaslin
The most controversial issue in education today is clearly Common Core. It's being more hotly debated than bullying, zero tolerance, sex ed, abortion or even school lunches.
Common Core is the title of a new set of standards the Obama administration has been trying to force the states to use. Even before the standards were written, 45 states and the District of Columbia signed on, encouraged by inducements of federal funds. The principal outliers are Texas, Alaska, Nebraska and Virginia.
Now that parents and teachers are finding out what is commanded by Common Core State Standards and what is being taught by "Common Core-aligned" materials, moms and teachers are raising a ruckus, trying to get their respective states to repeal their involvement. Many are demanding that their state withdraw altogether from Common Core, principally because they believe it is a takeover by the Obama administration of all that kids are taught and not taught.
The backlash against Common Core has developed into a potent political force. About 100 bills have been introduced into various state legislatures to cancel, stop or slow down Common Core requirements.
Indiana broke the ice on March 23, becoming the first state to pass an anti-Common Core bill. It strikes out references to Common Core in the law and requires the state board of education to maintain Indiana's sovereignty while complying with federal standards.
When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed this legislation that opted his state out of Common Core, he said, "I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level."
The Indiana bill was introduced as a straight repeal of Common Core, but it ended up keeping so many Common Core requirements that its original sponsor, Sen. Scott Schneider, pulled his name off of it.
The game of some people, obviously, is to pass standards that are nearly identical to Common Core but under a different name, because the name itself has become toxic. And states are always solicitous to maintain their flow of federal funds, which the Obama administration uses as bribes or threats.
The second state that went public against Common Core was South Carolina. On May 30, Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill abolishing Common Core standards in her state beginning in 2015.
Legislators were responding to constituent complaints that Common Core introduces frivolous and illogical teaching techniques to no apparent purpose while imposing new standards that are not meaningful improvements. Common Core ends up being a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.
Parents won a remarkable victory when the Oklahoma legislature repealed use of Common Core by the overwhelming bipartisan vote of 71-18 in the House and 31-10 in the Senate, and replaced it with academic standards written by state government officials. After receiving an estimated 20,000 phone calls in support of the repeal, Gov. Mary Fallin signed the repeal into law on June 5.
This law directs the Oklahoma State Board of Education to create new and more rigorous standards by August of 2015. The State Regents for Higher Education, the State Board of Career and Technology Education and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce will evaluate the newly written standards to make sure they truly make students "college- and career-ready."
Fallin's message in signing the repeal of Common Core was blunt in explaining what is wrong with the standards. She wrote: "President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards. Common Core is now widely regarded as the President's plan to establish federal control of curricula, testing and teaching strategies."
Fallin's message reminded us, "Citizens, parents, educators and legislators ... have expressed fear that adopting Common Core gives up local control of Oklahoma's public schools." We congratulate Oklahoma's governor for having the courage to stop the well-financed plan to railroad Oklahoma's public schools into kowtowing to federal control.
From the start, Common Core has been ballyhooed as a state-led (not federal) initiative each state could voluntarily choose to adopt. But, as the governor wrote, "The words 'Common Core' in Oklahoma are now so divisive that they have become a distraction that interferes with our mission of providing the best education possible for our children."
Like most left-wingers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan played the race card (for which he later had to apologize) when was besieged on all sides by Common Core critics. He accused opponents of the program of just being "white suburban moms."
Duncan should have read The New York Times, which published a picture of both white and African-American moms protesting Common Core wearing signs that read, "My child is not common." Parents nationwide are saying no to Common Core.
People are coming to see it as Commie Core.
ping
Oh yeah, that will accomplish a lot.
IOW they don't want to return the money.
Common Core = universal indoctrination.
Young skulls full of mush are being formed into future robo-voters, totally devoid of any capability for critical thinking.
Final domestication of humanity. But for whose benefit?
Certainly not for the greater number.
Wife’s a math teacher. The illogical, arbitrary methods used to get kids to a simple addition or multiplication answer should all by itself end common core. It boils down to endlessly grouping numbers and drawing pictures of those groups.
Talk about killing interest in math. Turns a few second answer into an entire project
I applaud this, but why wait intill ‘15? Seems logical to start at the beginning of the new semester in the fall of 2014. Should be easy enough just to return to the old curriculum, it would seem.
“But for whose benefit?”
The companies that make the CC materials (for a ‘steady flow of business’, as Gates put it) and, of course, Bill and Melinda Gates themselves.
The common folk be damned.
Maybe later they talk commie, but so far I haven't seen it.
What grade does that stuff start in? I haven’t seen it yet in the lowest grades.
That giant sucking sound you hear is the air coming out of Common Core.
Republicans:
Run on repealing Obamacare and Common Core and on fixing foreign policy.
The steps for teaching things like mathematics are similar to the “new math” that was put into practice back in the Sixties during those halcyon days when the Department of Education was still new and shiny.
The “old method” of teaching, say, multiplication tables by rote, was found to be “clumsy” and “stultifying”. The “new” way was to allow the child to determine by intuition how numbers were multiplied and they would come to a much deeper understanding of the concept.
Except that many NEVER got the idea, and thus were promoted to a grade level far beyond their competence. After a few years of repeated failure to impart the basics in this manner, the “new math” was abandoned, and teaching by rote again became the norm.
In actual practice, the evolution of the teaching of mathematics probably goes like this:
The following examples may help to clarify the difference between the new and old math.
1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?
1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?
1975 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.
(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M
(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.
(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?
1990 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.
1997 (Whole Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.
(a) What do you think of this way of making money?
(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?
(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you’d like it to look.
My sister teaches and says this stuff is tough. My son's teacher in kindergarten says this stuff is off the chart tough. This is a teacher in 90212 mind you.
I think this is going over like poison in schools where there are less involved parents.
This summer we are on vacation and some books for next year for studying are coming with us.
commie core = The Dumbing Down of our Children!
I am so thankful our kids graduated from a small Texas town, where the teachers were mostly either conservative or didn’t let you know which way they vote. My kids got a good solid education in a small Texas town. Otherwise we would have sent them to private schools. This Commie Core is such a JOKE and the JOKE is on US
You don’t get social studies in the early part of education, so I haven’t seen it yet.
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