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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?"
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.
But, seriously, we've only solved the universal literacy problem over about the last 50-150 years(depending on when you consider it "solved"), and it's made a huge difference for how well society functions. You can hand almost any American a book about how to do a well-paying job, and they could actually try and tackle it if they wanted. That didn't used to be true, at all. You can count on someone being able to heed a warning label on a product. The US highway system is easily navigable with just reading skills.
The difference between a literate and illiterate population is so huge that we can't even imagine trying to transition back. Most of our problems now hinge on how we go above and beyond basic literacy and math skills, not whether we do.
It is indoctrination, pure and simple
Basic literacy and numeracy is indoctrination now? I think your tinfoil hat's a little tight.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Gates only supports the common core because it will create students stupid enough to buy Windows 9.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Monoculture.
It worked for Windows security! Why not for American education?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"First off, getting stuck with a class of crappy students can cost you your job . . ."
No, that's not how the evaluations would work. The improvement of individual students could be tracked and evaluated against the standard.
"Once they receive tenure, they should no longer be subject to evaluation . . ."
That should not be true of anyone.
But, seriously, we've only solved the universal literacy problem over about the last 50-150 years(depending on when you consider it "solved"),
Sadly, you are only correct if you are equating "the ability to read (anything)" as literacy. There are states where the functionally illiterate rate is staggering. The figures on the DOE sites are very misleading, since they consider the ability to read "basic prose" to indicate "literacy" - when in reality, the "deeper numbers" indicate "21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read.". The numbers are even worse if one expects an adult to read at what's considered an adult level - someplace decently over 50%.
and it's made a huge difference for how well society functions.
The true situation does indeed impact how well society (in this country) works. And we can see that ignorance, lack of education and lack of literacy driving some lunatic policies.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
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?
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.
Where to begin? Denial of reading the classics. The elimination of poetry and Shakespeare. Replacement with texts designed to limit vocabulary and more importantly, limit thinking. The almost assured dropout rate of at least 34% as the kids too stupid to achieve common core drop out from frustration and the kids too smart for common core drop out from boredom.
It's likely great for the 68% of the kids in the middle of the bell curve, but universal literacy is not going to be accomplished under it anymore.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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
Oh please! You're talking about two idiot groups that make content aligned to Common Core as if CC was a plane and they provided the engines. All your examples show is that somebody looked at the standards and then wrote some political crap to try and sell. They were probably making the same crap aligned with individual state standards a few years ago. Do you think any school systems will actually buy it?
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).