Common Core: too hard? solution: keep 'em dumb

[pgardn]

Should have never left, Texas, I guess. I don't have nearly the experience (or apparently gripe) with that type of arrangement. However, where I am in Western Pa, the union completely dominates everything regarding the teachers' contracts. Starting salary for B.ed. is over 60K - includes generous, ac ulating sick/personal time (as well as a cushy arrangement with the university that has the district pay for the teachers to get advanced degrees through watered down evening and online courses) - and a very healthy retirement pension. Tenure is easy, and nearly bulletproof.

Texas does not have teacher unions. Texas teachers don't strike.

[pgardn]

From personal experience, my wife does have a teacher's certificate to teach in Texas (never took a job as one, however). Before deciding to move to a small town, she got the cert. Anyway she applied and visited Boerne ISD; spent a couple of days there with the faculty. KNEW she couldn't teach secondary due, in large part, to the fact that her peers (with more seniority) weren't really scientists at all; from her perspective. The department chair, in fact, had a science education degree herself...not even a B.S.

Maybe that's why Boerne, despite its reputation, isn't on your list of "top 3" (or because it's not technically in S.A.?

I got my BS in molecular biology and my masters in Biochem. I was a TA while at UT, went to work for a lab, then decided to teach. (I am no longer doing so) The head of our dept. quit as a medical doctor and came back to teach. When I applied and spent a couple of years in the trenches, I leapfrogged teachers with more seniority into the AP position held by the dept. head when she moved to Central office. So I guess each place is a little different. I will tell you I saw PHD 's quit because they were unable to cope with the mind of a teenager. You must know your stuff in my experience in schools that care. But you also must know people, including teenagers.

I did have to take education courses before teaching and found them completely useless. However, The best class I took for teaching was student teaching.

I met physics teachers at the two HS I taught at better than any physics teacher I had in college. Far better. But not in getting grants for research.

The teachers I met were far better then anything I encountered in HS.
My £2... But I taught in schools with parents who cared. I usually did not have enough chairs available on parents night. I attribute this to my good looks and modest disposition.

[pgardn]

The problem that continues to persist that the OP's article does not mention is the wide array of students that are encountered by the school system. We have kinders coming in that can read, write and add. In that same district we have malnourished children that need to be fed and taken care of. These underprivileged continue to fall further behind. These kids on average will never be able to say, pass a real Alg II course unless we continue their education into their 20's. Yet Texas requires passing this course. So Algebra II has become Alg I, and Alg I has become pre Algebra. It has happened with science courses as well.

Repeat:

Public Schools in the US most often mimic the socioeconomic status of the clientele they serve.
The US public school system? Juvy, hospital, surrogate family, prep for college... All of theaforementioned


If its all of the above, Governors like Rick Perry do not get it.

[exstatic]

there's no reason to have 4 years of english whenever it's the native language and such an emphasis on writing/lib arts, that should already be mastered by junior high.

That "sentence" is a pretty good argument FOR four years of English.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

That "sentence" is a pretty good argument FOR four years of English.

The several hundred thousand manufacturing job in this country that are unfilled because high school grads don't have the most basic technical skills those jobs require makes a much better argument that the emphasis high schools place on English over math is re ed.

[Nbadan]

I have a hard time believing the gap between us and countries like India in terms of math education is THAT much because of teachers. It's not like math teachers in India have developed this riveting curriculum where students can learn calculus via a game of kickball which makes the students interested in math. It's a lot more to do with the culture parents, students and everyone else has developed in this country where math is an annoying subject you wanna get out of the way with the lowest amount of work possible.

There are teachers who do a great job with the kids here in the U.S.... kids are resilient and can overcome poverty, but at some point, it turns into a labor of love rather than a job...I don't know what else you would call working under such pressure for 80 hours a week for less than $50K

[Nbadan]

The several hundred thousand manufacturing job in this country that are unfilled because high school grads don't have the most basic technical skills those jobs require makes a much better argument that the emphasis high schools place on English over math is re ed.

I bet most people here couldn't pass the 8th grade New York Common Core test...

http://www.engageny.org/sites/defaul...th-grade-8.pdf

[DMC]

Send your kids to a seminary. There the teachers are dead sure of their teachings and the material has been vetted for thousands of years as infallible. They will also get introduced to same sex relationships and learn to cope with trauma.

You can't beat it (they don't allow it).

[scroteface]

That "sentence" is a pretty good argument FOR four years of English.

excuse me for not proofreading my spurstalk posts and using poor grammar/punctuation out of laziness, i didn't get the memo that spurstalk.com was this serious gathering of the minds.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

excuse me for not proofreading my spurstalk posts and using poor grammar/punctuation out of laziness, i didn't get the memo that spurstalk.com was this serious gathering of the minds.

your spurstalk grammar is proof we need more english classes about poetry

[101A]

I bet most people here couldn't pass the 8th grade New York Common Core test...

http://www.engageny.org/sites/defaul...th-grade-8.pdf

I could (only because I have 8th and 10th grade students at home right now - been practicing).

That test is tough; if that really is the CC standard, it is too strenuous IMO. We are so far from being at that standard: True story: My wife's Chem 101 class - she gives a pretest on the first day of class. Every year 40-50% of the students (college Freshmen nursing & nutrition majors primarily) CANNOT convert ml to L.

As in, how many L is 2350 ml.

The test you posted 4 years earlier in their education....please.

[boutons_deux]

"if that really is the CC standard, it is too strenuous IMO."

of course it will take time to upgrade the teachers to pass the test, then upgrade the material, and then get the students up to grade

or

we could just leave them all dumb and ignorant and incompetent, which is pretty much what international comparisons say about US students.

[boutons_deux]

of course, right wingers freak out as usual at any attempt to have an educated populace. They depend totally on an emotional, pissed off, ignorant misinformed base.

War on the Core

The backlash began with a few of the usual right-wing suspects. Glenn Beck warned that under “this insidious menace to our children and to our families” students would be “indoctrinated with extreme leftist ideology.”

(Beck also appears to believe that the plan calls for children to be fitted with bio-wristbands and little cameras so they can be monitored at all times for corporate exploitation.)

Beck’s soul mate Mic e Malkin warned that the Common Core was “about top-down control engineered through government-administered tests and left-wing textbook monopolies.”

Before long, FreedomWorks — the love child of Koch brothers cash and Tea Party passion — and the American Principles Project, a religious-right lobby, had joined the cause.

Opponents have mobilized Tea Partyers to barnstorm in state capitals and boiled this complex issue down to an obvious slogan, “ObamaCore!”

As one educator put it, less than half in jest, “The problem with national testing is that the conservatives hate national and the liberals hate testing.”

Discomfort with the Core may grow when states discover, as New York did this month, that the tougher tests make their schools look bad. But overwhelmingly the animus against the standards comes from the right.

But today’s Republican Party lives in terror of its so-called base, the very loud, often paranoid, if-that-Kenyan-socialist-in-the-White-House-is-for-it-I’m-against-it crowd.

In April the Republican National Committee surrendered to the fringe and urged states to renounce Common Core.

The presidential aspirant Marco Rubio, trying to appease conservatives angry at his moderate stance on immigration, last month abandoned his support for the standards.

And state by red state, the effort to disavow or defund is under way. Indiana has put the Common Core on hold. Michigan’s legislature cut off money for implementing the standards and is now contemplating pulling out altogether.

Last month, Georgia withdrew from a 22-state consortium, one of two groups designing tests pegged to the new standards, ostensibly because of the costs. (The new tests are expected to cost about $29 per student; grading them is more labor-intensive because in addition to multiple-choice questions they include written essays and show-your-work math problems that will be graded by actual humans. “You’re talking about 30 bucks a kid, in an education system that now spends upwards of $9,000 or $10,000 per student per year,” said Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Ins ute.)

The Common Core is imperiled in Oklahoma, Utah, Alabama and Pennsylvania. All of the retreat, you will notice, has been in Republican-controlled states.

as with that other demonic federal plot, Obamacare — the Republicans aren’t interested in making reform work. They just want it dead.


“Conservatives used to be in favor of holding students to high standards and an academic curriculum based on great works of Western civilization and the American republic,” two education scholars, Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern, wrote in National Review Online. “Aren’t they still?”


http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/19...-the-core.html

ing tea baggers, red states, Confederate states.

right-wingers are above all interested in destructive, obstructive All Politics All The Time.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol nyt op ed and the lazy conflation of extreme right wing as main stream conservatism.
lol @ boutons rage.

The GOP panders to the Tea Party mentality, but that is not main-stream. The TP is very vocal and they're vastly over represented by the attention that the contemporary GOP pays them. But, the day will come when either the GOP collapses entirely and splinters into likely a moderate wing, and a zillion splinter Tea Party wings or someone with more than two brain cells to rub together takes the helm of the GOP and brings the moderates back into the fold.

[TeyshaBlue]

You think we teach to the test too much now? Wait until CC is completely installed.

Teaching a child critical thinking (that is, the ability to figure out the answer by themselves, not regurgitating curriculae) is about 100x more important than the most potent core "value". Design and implement a robust Voc-Ed program and end the outcome based, lowest common denominator bull like CC.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol @ Keller getting destroyed in the comments.

Dr. Gary ThompsonSalt Lake City, Utah
Mr. Keller:

As a local doctor of clinical psychology, I take issue with your column.

As a African American, Moderate, President Obama voter, father of multiple children in public school systems and Director of Clinical Training in a child psychology clinic (Los Angeles and San Francisco trained), I take issue with not only your lack of citations to your multiple claims, but your role in continuing to make issues of concern surrounding Common Core a "Left-Right" issue.

You mention Glen Beck and his opposition to the Core and your cite their right wing dogma as evidence of their incorrect stance on several issues related to the Core. If that is your only foundational basis for criticism, chew on this:

I made a T.V. appearance on Mr. Beck's show voicing objections to the manner in which "Testing" is being utilized via Common Core. . Good luck trying to hem a San Francisco trained, African American, Obama voter into that convenient, and overused conceptualization of "Right Wing nut bag, Anti Core activist". I'm not a activist. I hate politics. I'm a scholar by profession, and a father at heart.

The "tests" are a horrible, not validated experiment that have never been subjected to proper pilot test studies. 70% of NY students "flunked" the test not because of "added Core rigor", but because the test itself is a disaster. If you wish to have a relevant discussion on the issue minus the labeling, contact me. In lieu of such, stop the rhetoric.

[boutons_deux]

anybody who Beck invites in his show if IMMEDIATELY suspect

yes, I read where Mayor Bloomberg is pissed that his rep as "the education mayor" having made major education improvements is trashed by 70% common core test failure.

And TB believes this Beck asshole that it's the fault of the test?

[TeyshaBlue]

It's obvious you are completely clueless as to anything relating to education. Do you ever, just once, bother to research something that pops up on your RSS reader? no. Just keep on parroting whatever your demented RSS feed tells you to parrot. For reasons outlined above (which I see you immediately ran away from) CC is, at best, a ridiculous proposition.

Keep running, simpleton.

[TeyshaBlue]

Anything posted from your RSS feed is IMMEDIATELY suspect.

lol simpleton.

[boutons_deux]

TB

agrees with BecKKK host that test is ed because too many students fail it.

[TeyshaBlue]

lol simpleton who can't be bothered to read.

[TeyshaBlue]

Here's something else you won't be bothered to read because it doesn't say what you want it to.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/w...ore-standards/

[TeyshaBlue]

Do you even understand what Common Core means as pertains to curriculum design?

[TeyshaBlue]

Do you realize that it mandates certain aspects in the core curriculum. It also removes them as well. You can't teach money math in Kindergarten because it's not part of the CC methodology.
There are many other aspects that are removed as well. If you possessed even the slightest hint of intellectual honesty, you would actually read up on the topic.

[TeyshaBlue]

now post a smiley and a non sequitur per par.