I don’t know about this lady, but I did read many books from 25 years ago on the ‘Education Wars’ back then.
So, for what it’s worth here, I’ll try to DEBUNK a few things about Common Core:
First, for people that were reading about the state of education 25 years ago - books such as Thomas Sowell’s Inside American Education, the first thing we noticed about Common Core is that it was NOTHING NEW. Virtually all the bad things about Common Core (Whole Language Reading, math by Calculators and ‘spiraling’, etc.) already existed and was widespread long before “Common Core” existed. Likewise, get rid of Common Core, and that crap isn’t going anywhere, because it’s not Common Core that brought this crap, it was the teachers and others that brought it. Here in Texas, we don’t have Common Core...but you’d never know it by looking at the material. As long as we let ‘them’ (i.e., the bunch with ‘Education’ degrees) run our classrooms, we’ll have this crap, regardless of what ‘they’ call it (and yes, ‘they’ will morph the name once it gets discredited, such as Whole Language >> Sight Words). In fact, in pointing out the above several times here, I’ve noted that Common Core did us the favor of painting a nice big target on this crap...but it’s nothing new.
The REAL VICTORY for our side is on the funding side - get rid of the direct funding from government to ‘them’ and make ‘them’ have to compete with others teaching traditionally, and ‘they’ become powerless - that is where the real battle has to be fought. That is where ‘they’ will fight to the death.
So, personally, I think the left will go nuts. For them Common Core made life easier, as they no longer had to coordinate the destruction of our education system through the 50 states...they just did it out of DC, but the BIG PRIZE is starving them of money, since they will wither on the vine at that point.
Bump. Starve the beast.
Fortunately I completed most of my schooling before there ever was a fedgov DOE.
My ‘hometown’ school district hasn’t changed much over the past 40 years.
Other than the employment register of the local school system has more than doubled.
The number of kiddos is roughly the same.
Oddly enough, the test scores have remained largely the same or have fallen.
And the school superintendent now lives in a half million dollar house and drives a $80K+ car.
Huh.
good points.
I’ll add that when I was in elementary school (1960’s) was when I saw the introduction of “SRA” reading materials. A bunch of color coordinated tabbed system for reading that looked nice but were boring as crap. Quite possibly led to the deterioration of reading and attention since you didn’t learn to read an actual book and then discuss thoughtfully as a class.