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Bill Gates Still Trying To Buy Some Common Core Testing Love
theodp writes: "Bill Gates famously spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, implement and promote the now controversial Common Core State Standards," reports the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss. "He hasn't stopped giving." In the last seven months, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has poured more than $10 million into implementation and parent support for the Core. Strauss adds: "Gates is the leader of education philanthropy in the United States, spending a few billion dollars over more than a decade to promote school reforms that he championed, including the Common Core, a small-schools initiative in New York City that he abandoned after deciding it wasn't working, and efforts to create new teacher evaluation systems that in part use a controversial method of assessment that uses student standardized test scores to determine the 'effectiveness' of educators. Such philanthropy has sparked a debate about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people who pour part of their fortunes into their pet projects — regardless of whether they are grounded in research — to such a degree that public policy and funding follow." If you're still on the fence about Common Core after viewing it, the Onion just came out with a nice list of the pros and cons of standardized testing that may help you decide.
Common core does not teach to the test, no child left behind does. Common core does not meantion in any way testing, or how a student must learn. Schools in my area do not buy any books, they make the common core lessons themselves.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I have always been poor at spelling.
Pro-tip: Use a modern browser and look for the little red squiggles under words. That means they are misspelled. Use the right button on your mouse to click and choose the correct spelling. This will not only make your posts more readable, but also give you greater credibility.
The Common Core opposition isn't just coming from Republicans. My wife and I have been fighting over New York's horrible implementation of Common Core which includes scripts for teachers that they aren't allowed to deviate from, high stakes testing, and most recently tying said testing to teacher jobs. We're definitely not Republicans. Around 300,000 students refused the tests in NY. (Before someone says "well, they're just hard tests", the 6th grade tests had college level reading material on them.) Bill Gates, Pearson, and others are pushing this to make money off students - not to help students succeed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We've tried that, and it turns out that it doesn't really lead to independent states in education. Look at all the textbook debacles that start in Texas, for example. Why would textbooks in Texas matter if you live in a different state? They matter because the companies that publish textbooks don't want to publish different versions for each state, they want to publish for the largest states (population wise) first and then try to sell the same texts to other states.
This results in textbooks going in to non-nutter states that include discussions on intelligent design and other rampant bullshit. The states only have the flexibility to get textbooks of their own choosing if they exist (as few states have the time and money to go about preparing their own textbooks) so they end up with what the boards in Texas approve.
In my high school in downstate Illinois, several of my classes were taught using locally published material. Oh, we had the standard textbooks, but we were tested on the material in the local material. Chemistry was taught from a locally-written textbook, and my father (a research chemist) thought that home-brew textbook was better than some of the college textbooks on his shelf. This wasn't restricted to just one state: in Oklahoma we had a textbook written by an in-state college professor about the history of the Native Americans, from Columbus through to then-present day. I'm not aware of any Texas textbook that does more than scratch the surface about the "Trail of Tears." And the state didn't publish the textbook.