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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's not the core that's the issue. It's the testing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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.
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 dunno, this sounds like a false choice to me. Whether Common Core is good or bad is debatable, and I'm sure there are a lot of people willing to debate you on that. Do the SATs need to be changed? Yes. I could agree with that. But this doesn't mean that the changes suggested are the best way to go about it, or even if the changes are better than what we have now.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
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."
It's everything. While it would be fairly difficult to make the education system even more abysmal without trying to do just that, this isn't helping.
Thank you Dave Raggett
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?
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....
Obviously, if you think that, then the education system failed you.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
rates per 100,000 young persons aged 15-19
country year Total
USA 2000 8
Japan 2000 4
China 1999 4
To be quite blunt, your entire argument seems to be that high standards and expectations are a bad thing. That, of course, flies in the face of the recently validated idea that high expectations lead to high performance
When I was in third grade, we didn't write out the times tables, we wrote out every single number between one and a thousand in numbers and in letters by ones, one and ten thousand by fives, tens, and fifties, and one and one million by hundreds as homework. It took about a week. That is a form of rote memorization and it works.
You talk about Common Core producing "confused, bitter adults.. or the worker drones they really want", yet the current curriculum is based more on memorization and parroting back the "correct" answers and gives partial credit for utilizing the correct method even if the answer is wrong (that, by the way, boils down to "it doesn't matter what you get as long as you do things my way") rather than critical thinking which many say is a hallmark of Common Core
It really sounds like your "bright" kid liked science and school when it was easier and as he has gotten older he has, like so many kids, started to dislike school and you are blaming Common Core instead of actually finding out why your kid doesn't like it. Maybe you should start spending more time with your kid and helping him with his studies, something called "being a parent", instead of making excuses.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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.
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.
It's a disaster. It's pushing the majority of young children far too hard for their age
After reading a great deal about the countries who are improving their schools (in preparation for the schooling of my child), I don't think anyone should claim that our children are being pushed too hard. While we don't need to start pushing our children as hard as the South Koreans, our children are capable of far more than our schools give them credit for. But one reason it is hard to push our children to succeed is that they have parents at home validating that they don't even need to try and rise to the occasion.
Based on my experience with cousins and one of my brothers, I can in some small way empathize for parents who first understand that their "bright" 3rd graders are turning into average 6th graders. Different children hit the limits of their natural ability at different times (even the very bright ones will hit it sometime in college if they push themselves). Successful parents are able to push their kids to excel beyond their natural abilities (my wife's parents did that very well with her), but the poor parents just blame the school system or society.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
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
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.
Right off the bat, your stats are 10 years old and thus irrelevant, and what of India?
FYI, both my wife - who used to teach - and I help our son with his homework a great deal, in fact, every single night, and there is no way in hell he could complete it on his own if we didn't. Yes its called being a parent, which is a lot better than being a presumptuous douchbag citing "excuses".
He's not the only child in this situation either: Jillian is a friend's daughter in his same class, also very bright and studious, and on the verge of tears several times a week. She too is no longer doing well.
They are stressing these kids out to the max and beyond. My kid is not even sleeping at night. They treat them like they're adults and they're not adults yet. Overly high, unrealistic expectations do not result in better performance, it does exactly the opposite, it destroys confidence, enthusiasm, and appreciation of education. And while I don't believe rote memorization is the key to learning, something simple like the times table is not the place to be getting tough. All the child needs to understand is that 5 x 3 means 5 + 5 + 5, or 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3. There is no call to make them write all that out for every single homework problem assigned, night after night, for half the school year.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
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).
So, you have named two kids in one class and have jumped to the conclusion it must be common core and not the teacher and not the students.
My stats are the most current I could find on such short notice and there was no information on India. But, what I notice is you offered NOT ONE SINGLE REFERENCE FOR YOUR CLAIMS AT ALL, and that makes your entire post "irrelevant".
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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.
Interesting rant... So you kid used to be on the honor roll and student of the month, and now he's not. So you want to raise your kid's self esteem yet when things are over their head, you think it makes them feel stupid?
Can we all have honor students? Is it always possible "smart" people to be in a situation where always know what's going on? Is it possible that parents are making kids feel stupid by overly high expectations?
Perhaps raising robust kids that don't always know the answer, or need to have constant pats on the back, but have enough self drive to survive that situation is what we should really be teaching in the primary school years. Is memorizing the times table, or dumbing down the curriculum so that the top N% of the students are unchallenged so they can have high self esteem performing some effectively meaningless exercise something even worth striving for?
Maybe that is something to think about...
You jump to conclusions in your accusal of my jumping to conclusions (conclusception ..?); I only named two kids here as examples, by no means did I exhaust my experiences with the system with just two anecdotal revelations. I know of other children, and talk to other parent and teachers.
You are partly correct, in that it does vary somewhat from teacher to teacher, some are certainly better or worse than others. But they don't choose the textbooks, and I still find common core the engine behind it all.
As much as we won't ever agree on this, sorry to hear about your stalker. I know the feeling.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
No, no it's not about that. We aren't the kind of parents that demand he get straight As or anything remotely like that. It was a bonus that he was on the honor roll, and I mentioned it only because I wanted to point out he wasn't a kid with a dull intellect. I have no problem if he gets Cs once in a while, it happens.
I'm talking about the stress and workload they're putting on kids. The material and homework I'm seeing is not appropriate for someone who is 12 or 13, it's just too high level. Example: try teaching a 12 year old about genetic counseling, meosis, DNA, and biology they used to teach at a high school level. That's what they're giving him to work on, and often homework questions aren't even covered in their book (that could be the teacher) . They even have to type blogs and whatnot. They're forced to do creative writing. You can't force or teach someone to be creative; you can encourage it, but it shouldn't be part of your language grade.
As far as dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, I totally agree with you there. Not everyone can be a winner. That's life. Teaching them otherwise is not teaching at all. The times table example is not about that though, that was about unnecessary busy work. Of all things to pound in a kid's head, I don't find the concept of multiplication all that difficult. But for everything else, CC is swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. At least, at his school, anyway.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
If Bill Gates is involved, I suspect some devious plot, though not necessarily Microsoft based. Actually, history would suggest that it's also Microsoft based, but he hasn't been in charge for awhile now, so perhaps he's got something else to push.
Every time I've checked one of his "benevolent" actions, it's turned out to be control motivated (or wealth motivated) so I'm now suspicious whenever his name appears.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think many folks have a severe misunderstanding of the how common core is related to reading material presented to the students.
There is no "science-knowledge" common core material. In common core, science has been integrated entirely within language arts: basically learning the ability to take reading material covering a scientific topic and extract information from the reading material, not learn the subject.
The point is not to teach a12-year old the scientific topics of genetic counseling, meiosis, DNA, etc. It is not *knowledge* based learning, but learning the skills of how to extract facts from written material. At the 12-year old level, for scientific texts, common core wants students to be able to:
- quote accurately from a text
- identify 2 or more main ideas from a text and summarize how they are supported by details
- explain the relationship or interaction between 2 or more ideas in the text
- determine the meaning of common scientific words appropriate to grade level
- compare and contrast two texts on the same subject
- draw on multiple texts to find the answer to a question
- explain how the author uses certain evidence or reasoning to support a specific point
- be able to integrate information from multiple texts on the same topic in a writing or speaking exercise
Not surprisingly, these new "science" skills are difficult for students trained to study "topics" and "facts", or have advanced and/or extra-curricular knowledge of a topic from other sources (say a parent), but is a lazy reader or doesn't usually want to examine and/or integrate information from multiple sources (e.g., likes discovering facts from single-source resources like Wikipedia or other Encyclopedia-like authoritative-resource). The goal of common core is not to learn any specific scientific topics, but to teach students how to discover knowledge in a critical-learning way from multiple sources of information. Hopefully these will be useful skills regardless of the topic presented, but is a radical shift in the goal (and probably not well communicated or taught by teachers used to the old fact-based curriculum).
I suspect this is why far-left-leaning and far-right-leaning folks seem to be so dead-set against Common-Core. Training people to get information from multiple sources and identify what evidence they are using to support their point of view is tantamount to learning to think for themselves. You might see how this is really scary for political movements that depend on low-information voters who are expected to tow-the-line...
Don't fret if you child doesn't understand all the nuances of meiosis or DNA, or genetic counseling from reading the supplied texts. The point is for them to learn to be able to read the text and extract ideas, viewpoints, and the logical reasoning (or lack thereof) in the supplied texts. The facts and topics themselves in the reading material are just supposed to be relevant and timely, not canonical parts of a curriculum. Hopefully it will inspire them to do more learning on their own if the topics are interesting (which is why they are supposed to be relevant and timely).
I have read them. In practice, the problems are: Multiple choice, the ability to game the tests by merely memorizing information, useless questions that don't test one's understanding of the material, and the stated goal of preparing students for college and a career (that is not what education is about).
Thank you Dave Raggett
Also, I don't buy that reading a passage and then answering exactly how they want you to answer improves critical thinking skills; the questions are often subjective and have multiple answers, but they only want you to answer one way. So much for creativity.
Thank you Dave Raggett
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
You seem to have shot yourself in the foot. From a 2004 paper in World Psychology on teen suicide:
rates per 100,000 young persons aged 15-19
country year Total
USA 2000 8
Japan 2000 4
China 1999 4
To be quite blunt, your entire argument seems to be that high standards and expectations are a bad thing. That, of course, flies in the face of the recently validated idea that high expectations lead to high performance
When I was in third grade, we didn't write out the times tables, we wrote out every single number between one and a thousand in numbers and in letters by ones, one and ten thousand by fives, tens, and fifties, and one and one million by hundreds as homework. It took about a week. That is a form of rote memorization and it works.
You talk about Common Core producing "confused, bitter adults.. or the worker drones they really want", yet the current curriculum is based more on memorization and parroting back the "correct" answers and gives partial credit for utilizing the correct method even if the answer is wrong (that, by the way, boils down to "it doesn't matter what you get as long as you do things my way") rather than critical thinking which many say is a hallmark of Common Core
It really sounds like your "bright" kid liked science and school when it was easier and as he has gotten older he has, like so many kids, started to dislike school and you are blaming Common Core instead of actually finding out why your kid doesn't like it. Maybe you should start spending more time with your kid and helping him with his studies, something called "being a parent", instead of making excuses.
half of my schooling was in europe , i totally agree with your opinion , there was one other thing we had to do in regards to arithmatic , that was starting in grade 3 , the teacher would ask the class for example " what is 7 times 9 , the first person to get it correct would go to the front of the class , then another question would be asked , this served 2 purpases , it felt great to be the first one to work out the answer , and it let the teacher know which students needed the most help !
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL