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Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing?
theodp writes "'I want to explain why Common Core is among the most important education ideas in years,' wrote Bill Gates in a USA Today op-ed last month that challenged the "dangerous misconceptions" of those who oppose the initiative (pretty confident for a guy who conceded there wasn't much to show for his earlier $5B education reform effort!). 'The Gates Foundation helped fund this process,' acknowledged Gates in quite an understatement of his influence. Receiving $6.5M in Gates Grants was Student Achievement Partners, whose founder David Coleman was dubbed the 'Architect of the Common Core.' So it's not too surprising that at last week's SXSWedu, Coleman — now President and CEO of The College Board (no stranger to Gates money itself) — announced a dramatic overhaul of the SAT that includes a new emphasis on evidence-based reading and writing and evidence analysis, which the AJC's Maureen Downey calls 'reflective of the approach of the Common Core State Standards.'" (Read more, below.)
"And over at The Atlantic, Lindsey Tepe reports that the Common Core is driving the changes to the SAT. "Neither Coleman nor the national media," writes Tepe, "have really honed in on how the standards are driving the College Board-as well as the ACT-to change their product." In conjunction with the redesigned SAT, The College Board also announced it would exclusively team with Khan Academy (KA) to make comprehensive, best-in-class SAT prep materials open and free in an effort to level the playing field between those who can and can't afford test prep services. In a conversation with KA founder Sal Khan — aka Bill Gates' favorite teacher and a beneficiary of $10+ million in Gates Foundation grants (much earmarked for Common Core) — Coleman stressed that Khan Academy and CollegeBoard will be the only places in the world that students will be able to encounter free materials for the exam that are "focused on the core of the math and literacy that matters most." "There will be no other such partnerships", Coleman reiterated. Game, set, and match, Gates?"
Litterisy is importint.
What this entire concept fails to acknowledge is that when everyone learns the same thing, you lose the benefits of everyone having a different educational experience. If we all learn exactly the same things, we take the risk that everyone fails. Why not do things differently in every state to see what works? Somebody needs to learn from basic experimental design...
To me, it doesn't help things to have prep material for students be primarily available on the internet - that doesn't really seem to be leveling things with people that may not have good internet access.
Not that the SAT was great, but at least there were a ton of prep materials you could get and use from anywhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem isn't that they have ideas and they spend money on getting those ideas to work. It's that the Gates foundation uses their "leveraging" plans for charity on everything, including more political stuff like education. So they give large gifts with the caveat that both that money, and an even larger chunk of public money be spent on doing things the way the foundation envisions.
This is great when it comes to eradicating diseases or building infrastructure, because once that's done, areas stay healthy and stable. When it's used on the already pretty-functional US education system, it turns into a "my way or the highway" situation and the plans being advocated by the Gates foundation aren't nearly as evidence based.
It's problematic.
It seems like this is supposed to be some sort of exposé deriding common core as an evil concoction from Bill Gates, when in fact this is the best change to the educational system in decades. Does anyone really think keeping the current SATs and current school API tests is a good thing?
Given the citation that an "earlier $5B education reform effort" didn't really do much, are we to believe that two small grants, $6.5M to David Coleman's company and $10.75M to Khan, somehow means that Gates single-handedly rammed the common core down everyone's throats against their will?
That seems hardly likely. Bill Gates may support the common core, but the notion that it's somehow a conspiracy that he masterminded with his wealth seems farfetched. If you look at reporting on the common core like this recent NPR article (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/28/267488648/backlash-grows-against-common-core-education-standards), you'll see quite a complex list of entities for and against common core. The Chamber of Commerce is for it, Glenn Beck is against it. There's a lot more in this fight than the Gates Foundation's $17.25M.
First, the current SAT rules are that each student can select which test scores to submit to colleges. Many kids take SAT prep courses and then take the SAT multiple times, submitting only the best result.
Second, colleges seem to be reluctant to publish any sort of data on the correlation (or lack thereof) between SAT scores and college GPA or dropout rates. So how do we even know whether the SAT is a useful assessment tool?
Disclaimer: I'm a college-application anarchist who thinks all admissions departments should be taken out and shot, and applicants selected using the time-honored Staircase Method.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Doing things differently in every state is the way things have been done since the dawn of public education.
It's a disaster. It's pushing the majority of young children far too hard for their age, and making them work inefficiently, where even memorizing the times table isn't good enough now, it all has to be written out ad nauseum. The detailed material they get in their books for 7th grade biology looks like High School material. All this is going to accomplish is to produce confused, bitter adults.. or the worker drones they really want. It's a beautifully evil dichotomy, talking about raising kid's self esteem while doing everything to make them feel stupid and in over their heads. Say one thing, do another. Forcing kids to do "creative writing" is another faux pau, it should be an elective. Not everyone is cut out to write creatively.
Sure, let's whine about how supposedly far behind the US is to China, India, or Japan.. and then let's look at their teenage suicide rates. Education can certainly be improved, but Common Core is not the answer. What it really boils down to is the cash cow it is to the NEA.
My kid is bright and used to love science; he used to frequently be on the honor roll is usually student of the month a few times a year. Lately, he's begun to hate school with a passion. Common core is the core of the issue. How is that inspiring him to learn or embrace knowledge? It's the scholastic equivalent of a shotgun wedding, expecting to engender true love at the end of a barrel.. / rant
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Part of the revamped SAT involves establishing Khan Academy SAT Prep courses. https://www.khanacademy.org/te... The perception has been for years that test takers from wealthier families have key advantages, including taking the test multiple times and paying for special training. Gates has been a backer of Khan Academy already. I think it's a positive step if they do more to level the playing field.
Gently reply
I encourage anyone interested in supporting common core that actually has kids in school right now to look at some of the actual questions in the Houghton Mifflin books. We are teaching our kids to make up answers.
http://gcsdblogs.org/johnson_sue/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/5-1.pdf
Here is Pre K-2
https://twitter.com/NicoleAgonicole/status/402091539850993664/photo/1
With such awesome, child-appropriate wording as “How does Topic C use the array model to move the learning forward?” it’s surprising this wasn't an English assignment. Not that it works much better as a math assignment. In any case, Common Core deems it worthy of second and third graders.
Diane Ravitch: "The Gates Foundation spent nearly $200 million to pay for the writing, review, evaluation, dissemination, and promotion of the Common Core standards. It is difficult to find a D.C.-based education organization that has not received millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to promote the standards. Bill Gates believes in the Common Core standards...And he is not at all concerned that the standards were never field-tested, even though Microsoft would never launch a new product line without extensive field-testing."
Common Core is a big thing in NY where I live right now, because the state just voted to suspend its implementation for 2 years. NY already has pretty high standards for high school graduation and, if I'm any indication as a product of it, the curriculum is pretty good too. That doesn't mean that all other states have the same standards, and it seems to me that Common Core was designed to bring all states up to a higher level. As an example, my previous job wanted me to move to Florida, so I played along and did the whole relocation trip thing before telling them, "Sorry." Even the real estate agents who were pushing the place hard told me that my children, if they were smart, would have to be in private school to get a good education...just like Texas, FL values football more than education in high school apparently.
It seems to me that all the people screaming about how bad this is brought it on themselves. Look at all the press about the evil teachers' unions who have pensions, yearly raises, protect their members and only work 180 days of the year. Also here in NY, there was a big fight to force teachers to be evaluated and ranked like corporate employees get their performance reviews. I'm not a teacher, and I'm totally against that. First off, getting stuck with a class of crappy students can cost you your job, especially early on in your career when you might have to work in a bad school district. Second, teachers are professionals. Once they receive tenure, they should no longer be subject to evaluation and should have a job for life, end of story. Doctors and lawyers aren't stack-ranked -- those of us in private sector jobs who don't like it should fight to get representation.
Regarding the SAT, I wound up doing much better on the ACT when I took both. The ACT was much closer to what the SAT is slated to become. I remember it focused a lot more on what you were learning in school rather than obscure vocabulary words. I have a horrible time with head-based arithmetic, and the math section of the SAT (when I took it) had no calculators allowed and was basically two 30-minute tests of arithmetic and algebra tricks. I went on to make pretty decent grades at a state university in chemistry, so so much for the predictive factor or SAT scores... :-)
The education system is failing because it is designed to educate a student that doesn't exist, the average student. Every child is different and every child needs different instruction at different times in their development. The education system needs to be completely thrown out. We should design a new system from the ground up that adapts to the needs of the student instead of the forcing the student to adapt to the needs of the system. I have no idea how to do that, but if I studied how children learn I'm sure I could come up with something. It isn't impossible, it just takes vision and courage. Ok, that's impossible.
My bad.
The Common Core is the one thing in modern politics that is capable of generating agreement between right-wing conspiracy nuts and left-wing conspiracy nuts: the Left hates it because they think it's an attempt to undermine teacher's union, and the Right hates it because they think the Feds are trying to undermine local control of schools. So everybody hates it.
But seriously, have you actrually read the standardds. There's nothing especially objectionable in them, and there is a lot to like. Implementation, particularly an over-emphasis on standardized testing, could well present a problem, but the standards themselves are pretty clearly positive.
Unless anyone thinks this is a part of some devious Microsoft plot, who cares how much Bill Gates is involved?
If you want to attack common core, attack the program, not the people who support it.
The entire American education system is broken. This a band-aid that doesn't address the real issues at play. It also continues to entirely ignore the systems that work so well in Finland and elsewhere. If we want to get serious, then we need to begin to model our system after those in the world that WORK. Not keep trying new systems and plans that fly counter to them year after year.
Follow the story link to the Gates Foundation Common Core grants, or check out this post from Diane Ravitch: "The Gates Foundation spent nearly $200 million to pay for the writing, review, evaluation, dissemination, and promotion of the Common Core standards. It is difficult to find a D.C.-based education organization that has not received millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to promote the standards. Bill Gates believes in the Common Core standards...And he is not at all concerned that the standards were never field-tested, even though Microsoft would never launch a new product line without extensive field-testing."
That is why we shouldn't allow governments to manage education. They can pay for it but should never manage it, otherwise it will inevitably become a tool of indoctrination as it is happening with the "Common Core".
I have two aunts that make a total of about 15k a year working there asses off in retail as single mothers. Bother fathers passed away. They can not afford a laptop (family made sure they got em). A requirement of Cores is keyboarding for homework. They are expected to pay for everything in this program even if they cant afford it. This nation thinks everyone can afford a monthly payment, forced payment for phones, insurance, healthcare. and If you can't pay the $300 a month in "affordable" programs, you are fined beyond recovery. Yes we have to move forward, but this shit has to stop, we need to provide help if we are going to require instead of fining the poor.
Coleman stressed that Khan Academy and CollegeBoard will be the only places in the world that students will be able to encounter free materials for the exam that are "focused on the core of the math and literacy that matters most."
Does that throw up red flags for anybody else?
Why are we supporting an educational policy where a private corp gets to not only dictate who gets "scholastically approved" but also controls the flow of information used to prepare for said approval?
Would we all enjoy an announcement that the Koch Brothers will offer to fully-fund public education on the state level, but only if the state agrees to teach only the political, economic and scientific theory that the brothers approve (with violations being an instant termination)?
Public Education should be just that, not a plaything of the 1%; not for ideological reasons nor for 30 pieces of silver to cover budget shortfalls.
Quoth NPR: 45 states, the District of Columbia and four territories have fully adopted the Common Core State Standards in English, Language Arts and Math. It will soon be 44 as Indiana forsakes Common Core for its own standards.
Common Core is not perfect. Not much is. But the language used in this post was well and truly slanted. I suggest that, in the future, you avoid politicking in your posting, and instead be an objective reporter of facts. Words like "acknowledge" strongly imply an associated guilt. Likewise, the rest of the OP's slant.
Many of the most successful countries with test results, have a school system where only the best continue on to more schooling the rest go to vocational schools.
I am not sure what a "vocational school" is in a post-industrial environment. I am not even sure any more what "best" means in this context.
The thing that bugs me about this attempt at reform isn't so much what they have done, but what they HAVEN'T done. There's things to like in the new standards, for sure. The math standards seem pretty decent (without studying them closely I can't say for sure; I wonder if possibly we're going TOO easy on our kids, I'd like to assume our kids can be smart if we push them and make some basic level of calculus-type mathematics part of the standard). The english standards are a bit harder to follow because they are categorized weirdly, so I will admit I am not too sure what is in there, so the following rant maybe should be taken with a grain of salt.
I think these standards are missing an important question -- why are THESE the important topics we should focus on? As an educator myself, teaching fresh-out-of-high-school students up to 40 year olds returning to school, the major thing I see across all age and economic groups is a lack of understanding of basic LOGIC. Without a good grounding in logic, in being able to make logical inferences and spot fallacies, it is extremely hard to talk mathematics with these people, because they simply cannot follow a train of logic. It bewilders them, and they either give up or they start to believe it's just "magic formulas" that I made up and have no grounding in the real world. 'I just memorize and pass the class so I can move on with life' is their mantra, because they think the subject is a waste of time, because they do not understand how it works. But that's sad because logic is the basis of mathematics, which has tremendous influence on most of the sciences. It's all logic! And it will also help people more so than learning quadratic equations, as it will help them spot fallacies in politicians' arguments, and prepare them for more knowledge-based jobs in the new economy -- network engineering, programming, electronics troubleshooting, etc. It's all logic. I try my best to add some basic logic skills to the math classes I teach to help people out with this, and it seems to work -- I have had consistently good reviews, and many students tell me they really appreciate the down-to-earth-ness of explaining why the formulas work and what they are doing. People are not stupid, they just don't know any better yet, and throwing upper-level concepts at them before they are ready is counter-productive.
tl;dr: If logic is not a part of this standard (which AFAIK, it isn't, I've certainly never heard anyone mention it and the website gives no easily-spotted indication otherwise), then I think the new standards are entirely missing the point of a reform.
Common Core has but one purpose- to collapse the ability and confidence of the vast majority of students in all the core subjects. It is based on a clever psychological 'trick' that is purposely designed to maximise the possibility of media attacks against critics of the abusive scheme.
You can split students of a given subject into 3 common groupings.
-Group A = Naturally gifted/self-motivating (let's say the top 10% of the class)
-Group C = Naturally educationally 'retarded' (let's say the bottom 10% of the class)
-Group B = the middle majority (in this simplification, 80% of the class)
Now it is ESSENTIAL for Bill Gates' purposes that Common Core teaching methods COLLAPSE the scores of group B, while leaving the scores of Group A and Group C untouched. The trick is to teach, say MATHS, with convoluted and frequently illogical methods that simply confuse Group B, but seem no more difficult to Group C than usual, and challenge members of Group A to see the 'new' methods as a 'puzzle box'.
Now, as I say, group B's scores (and more importantly, confidence) collapses, leading to Bill Gates' next stage- the carefully co-ordinated attack on the critics (see many of the comments here, for instance). Gates produces detailed "rebuttal" scripts to use against parents, concerned politicians and academics, and others.
1) Attack the pupil. Say the reason the pupil does poorly is because they are LAZY, watch too much TV, play too many video games. More homework is needed. A longer teaching day is needed.
2) Attack the teaching ethic in the school by comparing it to the 'FOREIGN' ideal. So, kids in Korea, or Japan, or Germany, or Singapore, or whatever faraway land is chosen for the propaganda do 'better' using the 'same' teaching materials.
3) Attack the parents. Say the problem is that parents INTERFERE, attempting to teach their kids 'better' ways of learning the subject, confusing the child. Point out that the teachers are the EXPERTS, and if the parents don't back off and let the teachers do their job WITHOUT interference, the parents are 'abusing' their kids.
4) Attack the critics of Common Core by using control words like "DENIER". Use the same methods as Team Gates uses against those that challenge the propaganda of Man-made 'Global Warming'.
5) Use the FAKE logic that because Group A and Group C do not experience significant changes in their scores under Common Core, there must be something inherently wrong with Group B.
6) Use paid reputation managers to flood all outlets with fake justifications for the usefulness of 'Common Core' teaching methods.
7) Attack the critics of Bill "Eugenics" Gates in the usual ways.
Bill Gates was a multi-millionaire before he even used his family's money to buy up other people's software, pass it off as his own, and start Microsoft. The Gates family has a long and disgusting history at the forefront of the US Eugenics movement. The Eugenics movement arose out of the need to justify US slavery of 'black' Humans in the 19th Century (when quoting the Old Testament as the reason that such Crimes against Humanity were OK was becoming unacceptable). The US Eugenics movement and the KKK are two sides of the same coin, and they walked literally hand-in-hand in the early part of the 20th Century.
Gates isn't just the prime force behind Common Core. This depravity also gave the World (but mostly the USA)
-the sickening 'inBloom' full surveillance database that tracks every aspect of every child in the USA. Gates created 'inBloom' in partnership with Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch, and named the project for the way Victorian Paedophiles described their child victims ("in bloom, and ripe for the picking").
-the unthinkably evil NSA domestic spy-platform, the Xbox One. An always on 'super-computer' attaches to a sensor platform which consists of:
1) a microphone array designed to track multiple simultaneous conversations, including those in other rooms from the console
2) a high-definition camera that sees perfectly in the dark
There’s this one opponent to common core that made a presentation based entirely on quotes from people who originally contributed to and supported common core: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF16la1IiGI”. Originally it seemed like a good idea, but the cirricula kept getting watered down so badly that students wouldn’t leave high school with enough education to get into college. There are those who like to suggest that common core is now only about indoctrinating students with {liberal | conservative} ideas. I don’t know enough about that. But if you can’t do basic algebra when you leave high school, you’re in trouble.
This “no child left behind” idea has only resulted in the general cirriculim being dumbed down. You can’t fail anyone, so you have to teach something so lame that any idiot can do it, and then even the smart kids don’t learn anything.
This concept has been implemented on Virginia and known as SOL, Standards of Learning.
It has failed miserably, causing not only no real learning by students, by systemic cheating on the part of teachers and administrators.
Not going to discuss content, but if your entire sourcing is from the "Tea Party News Network", everything looks like liberal/socialist/marxist conspiracy.
You don't happen to have any non-biased news sources, or corroborating links do you?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
And that is by far his most redeeming quality.
Those who know enough about Microsoft and how it
achieved its position in the marketplace know that Bill
Gates is not a visionary or a genius, and that Bill Gates
is a conniving little twat who took advantage of things like
his mother Mary being on a first name basis with John Akers.
Fuck Bill Gates. Why couldn't he have gotten cancer instead of Steve
Jobs who actually produced things worth having ?
The biggest reason they're changing is because so many more students are taking (read paying) to take the ACT, for a few reasons.
1. The SAT truly screwed up when it added the writing component - who wants to sit ALL morning and into the afternoon with very few breaks and no opportunity to eat?
2. States are using the ACT to measure "Career and College Readiness" as part of the Race to the Top.
Thanks for the "help" Bill.
Better Common Core than allowing the fundamentalists and fringe groups to continue pushing crap like "Young Earth" ideologies as "just a theory" equivalent to evolution and the big bang.
If it weren't for all the wingnuts and fools in Texas and elsewhere pushing that kind of crap, there wouldn't have been a rebellion against their bullshit through standardization like Common Core.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Look a problem! Lets throw money at it until we get bored and move on to something else!
There seem to be a lot of misconceptions and outright ignorance about Common Core here. Common Core is basically just a restructuring of when different subjects are introduced, and how much emphasis is placed on each area at each grade level. For example, in mathematics where previously you might have an algebra class one year, then a geometry class another year, then trigonometry another year, etc., this might get reorganized so that material from each of these courses is introduced at different times in what proponents claim is a more logical structure that achieves better results (and there does seem to be a lot of evidence to support it). So instead of Algebra in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th, you might get some parts of what was in the Algebra class in 6th grade, a little more in 7th, some more in 8th, while also being introduced to Geometry earlier and having that spread across multiple years. You end up in the same place (well, hopefully on average you end up a little more advanced by the end), but at any given point in their schooling students will be ahead of where they would have been under the past system in some areas, and behind in others - by design.
However, this rearrangement of coursework opens a can of worms, which is where most of the fighting comes in. Because things are introduced at different stages and in a different order, an entirely new curriculum is required. It is left to the states to decide what curriculum to use, and there are a lot of choices - much of it produced by commercial entities, some of it good and some of it really, really bad. This isn't a function of Common Core, per se, but merely a function of lots of groups taking advantage of a major re-write to try to get their product included in what is selected at the state or local level.
Likewise, since the order things are introduced changes, all of the standardized tests are no longer relevant - children might be learning some of what falls into "algebra" in the current system in the 5th grade, so a standardized assessment test would need to take this into account. Opponents latch onto this and complain that too much is expected of the students, because they are being tested on something "too advanced". Likewise, something that students previously learned in the 4th grade might not be introduced until the 6th - and again, opponents latch onto this because the standards have been "lowered". It's easy to cherry pick examples that go either way (which this comment section is rife with), because compared to what most of us experienced, it will feel "off".
The vast majority of the arguments against Common Core aren't actually about Common Core, rather they are about some of the curricula that have been developed to meet Common Core's structure. Just like there can be a fight every time a new science textbook is chosen in Kansas (or anywhere else), everyone is arguing over what the curriculum should look like, and it is all happening at once. So, lots of people trying to get their own political slant into the new curriculum, which is the same problem as always - it's just happening all at once across pretty much every subject.
Now, there are certainly objections or questions to ask regarding Common Core. For one, are the benefits of the rejiggering of subjects enough to outweigh the costs of introducing the system? What do you do about students who started with one system - can you transition them to the new standards effectively, or will we have several years worth of students with glaring holes in their education? And last (and probably the biggest question, and the one that has driven many one-time supporters to oppose common core), how do we ensure that the curriculum chosen by my school district/state/whatever is going to be effective and not just an amalgamation of commercial offerings selected through a combination of ideology, lobbying, and kickbacks - the educational outcomes are dependent on the effectiveness of the curriculum, and there is no guarantee that new ones being developed and offered will achieve that (and, for the reasons mentioned, a lot of reasons they might not).
common core is crappy. my kids who are both A students failed math this year. They can do the math
the regular and normal way that we all grew up doing. now in order to solve 42-22 it takes 6 steps?
Are you serious? my kids can do this math problem in their head and they still get it wrong in class under the new methods...
Also a kid that sits next to them (a neighbor) got 10*14 correct by answering the solution was 168 because he was able to explain
his logic and how he got the 168 as the answer. Are you serious? Spelling for 5th graders: "Venture capitalists are always greedy. Spell Venture"
Are you serious? Not only is the word already spelled but the sentence is a subliminal message by gates and his cronies on the Left (the 1% liberal progressive elitist).. STOP COMMON CORE
The parents should be able to administer a test to their children at the end of each year and it should measure the academic level. This level should be independent of whatever crap the school, the Man, or the SATs company is spewing out.
People are worried about test tampering (See Atlanta Schools) and racial demotivators and various education problems. But no one is giving the Parents an independent test to see if their child needs help or if their school is a sham.
Lets get the parents a way to independently, privately, determine the aptitude of their children for their age and level of schooling and take the control away from the those who would pervert education for their own twisted ends.
"Concocted by the same expert cadre that’s brought us every post-1970 education boondoggle, and resting on the same gross unfamiliarity with actual classrooms and students, the arbitrary, biased, technology-laden, assessment-obsessed Common Core is the creature of the Gates Foundation, with entities like the Pearson conglomerate sitting at Mr. Gates’s right hand. Pearson is the largest textbook and education software publisher in the world, as well as the world’s dominant education assessment contractor. Mr. Gates’s connection to the computer and software business is also a matter of public record."
"The Community Center for Education Results (CCER) was responsible for creating the proposal to collect an extensive amount of student data on our children. This pertains to Bill Gates’ desire to collect student information for each child in this country that can be accessed by those producing and profiting from products to be sold to school"
The SAT is a pointless test. School grades are more than sufficient for evaluating candidates for further study and jobs. According to world renowned linguist and professor emeritus at USC:
Yes, let's drop the SAT essay. While we're at it, let's drop the SAT.
Sent to the NY Times, March 11
Re: "Can writing be assessed?" March 10.
There is no point in testing writing form, i.e. the use of conventional writing style, grammatical accuracy. Research consistently tells us that writing form comes from reading, not from writing and not from study. Writing itself is a powerful tool for solving problems and making yourself smarter. This requires mastery of the composing process (e.g. knowing that as you revise you come up with better ideas). This cannot be tested. Research also tells us that high school grades are a good predictor of college success. Adding a standardized test does not improve the prediction. So there is no point in having the SAT.
Stephen Krashen
NY Times article: NY Times article:
Sources:
Reading and Writing: Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading (Heinemann and Libraries Unlimited); Lee, S.Y. (2005). Facilitating and inhibiting factors on EFL writing: A model testing with SEM. Language Learning, 55(2), 335-374.
Composing process: Elbow, P. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP. 1973. Perl, S. (1979). The composing process of unskilled college writers. Research in the Teaching of English, 13, 317-339. Boice, R. (1994). How writers journey to comfort and fluency. Westport: Praeger.
Grades and the SAT: Bowen, W., Chingos, M., and McPherson, M. 2009.Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Universities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Geiser, S. and Santelices, M.V., 2007. Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes. Research and Occasional Papers Series: CSHE 6.07, University of California, Berkeley.
Source:
what common core are YOU talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
so, to start with, the common core doesn't even have a required reading list, it leaves it open to schools to select.
ALSO, their 'sample texts' to help teachers out, do include plenty of classics! it SPECIFICALLY MENTIONS shakespeare in the wiki blurb!
so, you're doubly wrong. wtf, bro?
Lot's of jobs are saying people with the college degree are missing skills that you do get at the trades / tech schools.
The MCAT made a similar, very significant change in the late 80's, moving away from emphasis on "general knowledge" ("Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?), to problem solving and problem comprehension ("A sled is placed on a 30 degree incline, it's mass X, the coefficient of friction is Y. A rope around a pulley with weight Z is attached to the sled. The sled's speed will be...").
There was a flood of engineers soon accepted to medical schools everywhere, all of whom briefly looked like MCAT geniuses (me included).
They changed it back about two years later.
Stupid headline...
How bout someone who understands math, but cannot do arithmetic without a calculator/computer?
Now we can see our education system experience a blue screen of death.
Why do we keep insisting on experimenting with the way we educate our children? It ain't rocket surgery - we've been doing it for thousands of years. Why not just teach the stuff they need to know and cut out the political correctness and zero-tolerance crap? Hold the students accountable and flunk them if they don't make the grades necessary.
Common core is a good thing. My wife is a teacher of 15 years, and the changes being emphasized in common core are critical thinking, rather than rote memorization, and teaching to the test (no child left behind). There's plenty of bits up in the air about exactly how we're going to implement common core, but it actually gives teachers more freedom in how they approach their teaching, rather than a set list of things they have to make sure the kids memorize. I don't care who may have backed the design of common core, but the goals of common core are good. Now we get to fine-tune the implementation.
Also, much of the research that says "american schools are failing" has come from the textbook companies, who always have tests and curriculum updates designed to fix the "problems" the studies they've demonstrated. Make no mistake- no child left behind was substantially designed by textbook companies, so they could provide the solutions.
This is what I don't like about it. I've found groups and teams to largely be limiting to the top performing individuals. I think bringing kids up this way is just an attempt to make them corporate team drones and will end up extinguishing any advancements and actual ingenuity. There are of course situations where teams and groups are required and work best, but it can't be the only way to approach things.
shakespear is not the only " classical " writer , jules verne , h g wells , the list is endless , i am going to assume that a number of books will be used , i am concerned that some of the books used will be books that MS has borrowed from the new york libery , digitalised by MS , watermarked by the same company , and that we will have to pay to accses the same ! england , germany , the us of a , have different copywrite laws , there is in most copywrite laws a thing called FAIR USAGE , in a number of countries this means that students may use books , read them , without having to pay royalties to the author . however digitalising books , without payment to the author or the estate of them , seems to me to be piracy . in my opinion this issue should be discused ! ps sorry for the poor spelling and grammar ( alcoholic mother sent me to work at 14 ) just thought you should know im self educated .
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL