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.

Comments

Controversial because?

[damn_registrars]

Common Core appears to have become controversial primarily because the conservative media told us it is. Apparently they were hoping that the new standard would also find a way to further reduce teachers' salaries and career opportunities, and as it did not do that it needed to be destroyed at all cost.

Granted Common Core has some faults, for sure, but at least it is an attempt by someone to do something. So far we have seen lots of lip service on the education system in this country and very little action. I'd be more impressed with the arguments of those calling it "controversial" if they actually proposed a meaningful fix instead of just attacking the fix that we have.

Re:Controversial because?

[Njorthbiatr]

They do have a fix. It's called privatization.

In other words they want the system to keep failing so they can push private schools.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

Exactly, the media, particularly the conservative media, has a hard time seperating that there are 3 independant things to common core, the standards, the implimentation and the testing.

Common core is just a set of standards that says you need to know X before you move to the next grade.

Implimentaiton is how the teachers do it, however the books used, if any, while designed to teach that standard are not required. Teachers can use the books, develop their own lessons or any combiniation of the two. This is what people seem to have issues with, and seem to want to attribute it to the standards themselves, however without the standards this is still the same implimentaiton that would be used.

Re:Controversial because?

[kaizendojo]

It's controversial because it takes away time from teaching anything but the test, associated implementation and support costs are enormous and the only ones truly benefitting from this are the test manufacturers like Pearson... who also make the books for studying and the certifications for the teachers and even the GED certs so they have you one way or the other. Full disclosure; I am an independant consultant who works in IT a few days a week for a major school district and I am seeing this from the inside. If you'd like another perspective, I suggest going to YouTube and searching on John Olver's take. Funny, but at the same time chilling.

Re:Controversial because?

[NotDrWho]

Common Core appears to have become controversial primarily because the conservative media told us it is.

I love the way the summary frames it as "rich guys pushing crazy agendas vs. the public interest," when in fact this is much more a case of "rich guys pushing crazy agendas vs. another group of rich guys pushing different crazy agendas."

On one side you have Bill Gates pushing Common Core, on the other side you have the Koch Brothers pushing school vouchers so that people like them get a big tax rebate for sending their kids to schools where your commoner kids will never be allowed to go.

Re:Controversial because?

[JWW]

Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.

"Conservatives" are also for school choice, charter schools, school vouchers, all of which are designed to empower parents in those failing inner city districts some hope.

Now, I've kinda lambasted the liberal city government here, but their intentions aren't all bad. However, this is not a "throw money at" sort of problem.

I'll agree that Common Core has been combined with other items in order to criticize it. Common Standards are a "good thing", in fact we need to pull the standards back up from the constant lowering of them that has happened over time. I completely support this at the state level, from whence Common Core originated.

However, certain entrenched forces in the education community, and federal regulators glommed on to Common Core with the intent to have it drive curriculum and content. This was, and is, a mistake. The KISS principle should have driven the Common Standards, but they complicated it with federal mandates and absurd curriculum.

The "new" math they are trying to teach under the banner of Common Core makes me fear that we will end up with an upcoming generation that does't have the math skills to undertake a College Education in Engineering and Science.

Standards and levels of understanding are good. Demanding that everyone teach via the same methods (unproven ones at that) is not.

Re:Controversial because?

[king neckbeard]

Granted Common Core has some faults, for sure, but at least it is an attempt by someone to do something.

Perhaps our federal education standards should put emphasis on teaching children about the politician's syllogism so we don't just 'do something' even if doing something makes things worse.

Re:Controversial because?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time the educational establishment has tried to "improve" education, they've fucked it up even more.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

There were no federal mandates on common core. This is an outright lie by conspiricy theorists.

The curriculum is developed at the state/local/school level, with most of it at the school level. My bother, who teaches math2, helped develop them for his school and the surrounding schools. There is nothing that mandates a curreculum in common core or at the federal level, again out right lies.

The "new" math skills being taught are in general the most efficiant way to do math, particularly when a calculator, or paper is not handy.

As for innnercity schools that seems to be more of an issue with lack of parental ovesight than with school administrators. When parents are so busy working making minimum wage in a single family situation it becomes impossible to keep track of your kids regularly over time, and the kids wander. Schools are not baby sitters, but in innercity schools particularly they are treated as such.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

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.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

I am 39, way too old for common core, however I have always been poor at spelling. Math and logic great, spelling poor. However you were able to read it just fine I am sure, and this is the best argument you could come up with.

Re:Controversial because?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read these articles, written by one of the CC authors, designed to help teachers teach the common core standards, and then re-think your claim that "Common Core makes me fear that we will end up with an upcoming generation that doesn't have the math skills to undertake a College Education in Engineering and Science":

https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CCSS-Geometry_1.pdf
https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CCSS-Fractions_1.pdf

More here: https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/

As a math teacher, I have learned more about what I teach since CC was implemented in my state than ever did before (including a M.Ed. in secondary math teaching). Common Core math is certainly more rigorous than the math education I received through high school (in Texas and Florida).

Re:Controversial because?

[sycodon]

Don't forget, it's also a gravy train for legions of educators who (re)write the curriculum, text books, and tests.

It happens every time they change some standard, millions and millions are spent rewriting, repurchasing, etc. teaching materials.

Re:Controversial because?

[scamper_22]

I'd like to know why people think there is an education system problem?

I'm in Canada, so maybe the situation in the US is vastly different, but even in Canada we always have people trumping the education crises.

Over the past 30-40 years we've tossed money after money in the education system, reforming this and that, and can anyone say we've done any better that just having a teacher in a classroom doing their thing?

Heck, does anyone find the irony that people trump up Asian/Indian education, when many of these places don't really spend a lot on education or have 'advanced pedagogy'.

For all the gripes about education system, we somehow still manage to raise some brilliant people. We somehow manage to have people keep doing their jobs and life keeps going.

I would humbly suggest that most of the problems people are trying to solve via the 'academic education' system are the wrong place.

We do have a lot of problems with behavior/family... I experienced this when I was a teacher. Really, what do you do with a kid whose parents don't even answer the phone from the school. Is it any surprise the kid doesn't really care about school?

This is much better addressed through social services and policy changes like empowering teachers run their classes with some discipline.

In all honestly, and this is purely anecdotal, the only difference from when I was a student to when I was a teacher is we lowered the class discipline and became paranoid.

The kids aren't any smarter, they don't think more critically, our lesson plans are fancier, but the output is the same, if not worse. I'm being generous here to the current system :P Sure, math is my day was mainly taught via the textbook and problems. Today, they're almost taking the math out of math. But the new way is more 'advanced' and has more 'pedagogy'

Similarly, most of the workplace/industrial issues are much better dealt with outside of k-12. Training of workers, retention of knowledgeable workers, pursuing advanced degrees... all have little to do with k-12 education and more to do with industry issues.

Why we even concerned with bringing more people into STEM, when I've seen very good STEM people leave the field. Some have become lawyers. Others into project management. Ponder that.

Just what is the education crisis? I just don't see it. As I said, I don't think we've advanced more than have a teacher in a classroom.

Re:Controversial because?

[whoever57]

Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.

Explaining that is so simple:
1. Parents either don't have the skills or the time to assist their kids in succeeding.
2. Less resources in inner-city schools.
3. Poor attitudes towards learning amongst the kids (see item 1).
4. Poor teachers: Because teachers in these inner-city areas do not get paid more than their colleagues in good districts, only the worst teachers will teach there. Also, as a teacher, where pay is determined by test results, would you work in an area where the dice are stacked against you (see items 1, 2 and 3 above)?

However, this is not a "throw money at" sort of problem.

Actually, it is. Want better teachers? Increase pay and better teachers will enter the profession.

Re:Controversial because?

[cHiphead]

Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities?

All of these epically failing schools are the result of underfunded school districts. Even the privatized programs pushed inside the public school system end up more expensive that just allowing the school system to handle it with public employees, furthering the funding issues. Every single GOP sponsored 'conservative' program seems to be detrimental for public schools. Privatization is all I've seen from the conservative politicians that isn't from the religious part of the conservative education policy making. Why do you think schools are underfunded in the first place? Conservative policy makers.

Outside of your nonsense that depicts this is a political issue and blames liberals while ignoring the larger, actual issues of funding, I do somewhat agree with you on the common core view related to new math, but I also understand that it has an intentional design. I have a 6 and a 13 year old in the midst of this new strategy which, if you were to actually experience the flow of it, seems more functionally useful and builds on particular logic, instead of just memorization and acceptance of formulas without a particular basis of understanding built from other pieces. That said, not teaching kids about long division still drives me crazy. I feel a lot like this is a test being performed on my children's generation and it could really go either way, so I encourage learning outside of school provided methods to keep their minds open.

To summarize, conservatives aren't evil, just more full of shit, and even a broken clock is right twice a day. ;)

Re:Controversial because?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.

"Conservatives" are also for school choice, charter schools, school vouchers, all of which are designed to empower parents in those failing inner city districts some hope.

Wow, I am impressed by the doublespeak there! I can't speak for all charter school programs, but the one in Milwaukee I am familiar with. In that city, Charter schools have the ability to refuse students with special needs or with behavioral problems. It shouldn't be a big surprise, then, that they fill up with very teachable students, leaving the difficult cases to the public school system. The public school system then has to spend more of their budget on children who are more expensive. This makes their numbers look bad, which causes any parent of a problem-free child to jump ship to the charter schools. It's a death spiral caused by the charter schools and the rules they are allowed to run under. Conservatives love it because they get proof that the charter schools perform "better". But the student population is not at all comparable.
 
  If I was allowed to shift the most troublesome 25% of my job to someone else, I would appear to be a better employee. But that would have everything to do with the situation and nothing to do with my own personal performance.

Re:Controversial because?

[damn_registrars]

The nice thing about the US is that the states should be independent of one another when it comes to education and most other things.

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.

Re:Controversial because?

[LordLimecat]

Excuse me, Im looking for strawmen and someone told me this thread would be a great place to find them.

Re:Controversial because?

[DigitalPagan]

I would disagree, standards are part of the problem. They don't simply indicate that you need to know addition. They indicate knowing addition via these five different methods. A lot of common core opponents will point out how inefficient/impractical these methods are but if you understand math you will understand why they are presented. They are presented to help children understand place value and how numerical systems actually work. Here's the problem. Instead of making this knowledge part of the implementation, explaining why addition is done the way it is, it is part of the standard. Now the kids have to know each of the addition methods no matter how useless that approach is. A child can perform very well with one method but fail at the others. Often children become confused with the various processes and intermix steps from the various methods. Proponents of common core will argue that children can pick the method which works best for them but that isn't true. Since each method is part of the standard they are tested on each one. So even if they could solve a problem with method X they may get it wrong when tested on method Y. In the mean time they are taught to the standard so they learn the method but not the principles behind it, and the reason those methods were developed in the first place is lost. There are ways to fix this unfortunately I think the hate it has already generated is more likely to get the whole system thrown out the window.

Re:Controversial because?

[bhcompy]

What does "should" mean? In California, curriculum requirements include the history of the state, but that is not part of Common Core. Nationalized standards do not care about locale.

Re:Controversial because?

[sonicmerlin]

Oh please. Charter schools and vouchers are by any objective analysis a means of creating a two tiered school system, one for the rich and one for the poor.

Are you going to ignore the conservative push in states like Texas to teach Intelligent Design instead of evolution? Or the massive anti-intellectualism of the Republican party platform?

I can't believe you were modded +5 informative. So many conservatives who live in cognitive dissonance.

Re:Controversial because?

[ShanghaiBill]

The opposition to Common Core is easy to understand. Basically, the Republicans wanted testing to be controlled by the states, not the federal government. So they designed a system to do just that. The Democrats didn't like it at first, preferring something more centralized and bloated, but figured it was the best they could get, so they were eventually won over. Then the Republicans noticed that the Democrats no longer opposed their program, so they switched sides and decided if the Dems were for it, they needed to be against it. Rabid opposition to Common Core is now considered a rigorous requirement for Republican presidential candidates. Only Jeb has stood by it.

For another splendid example of "Republicans opposing their own ideas" see {Romney|Obama}care.

Re:Controversial because?

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Controversial because?

[Jason Levine]

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.

Re:Controversial because?

[Jason Levine]

There's also no transparency. Pearson makes the test, owns the test, and anyone releasing questions from the test can get in big trouble. The questions that were leaked show that 3rd grade tests had 6th grade reading materials and 6th grade tests had college level materials. This also means that the tests were likely designed to fail the students. (Pearson can sell more to students who fail than to students who pass.)

John Oliver's take was spot on. It was somehow funny and sad at the same time.

Re:Controversial because?

[Jason Levine]

Just what is the education crisis? I just don't see it. As I said, I don't think we've advanced more than have a teacher in a classroom.

It's an invented crisis so that Pearson can sell more, Charter schools can push out more public schools, and politicians can get more power by blaming teachers and implementing "assessments" that don't really test anything.

Re:Controversial because?

[satch89450]

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.

Re:Controversial because?

[pnutjam]

The new (CC) stuff seems better for those really interested in math, maybe the old rote memorization of algorithms is better for everyone else?
Bingo!
It's also better for making people develop an interest in math.

Re:Controversial because?

[damn_registrars]

So when your electrician screws up and your breakers trips every time you run the toaster nobody is qualified to judge the work faulty unless they also fix the problem? The point being that it doesn't take an expert, nor does it require the ability to devise a solution to know when something's been done incorrectly.

You almost created an argument there, too bad you posted AC which will prevent us from being able to tell if the person who posted it ever returns to see the response.

Nevertheless, it does warrant some exploration. The point I was after is that merely saying something doesn't work is not at all the same as actually doing something about it. Your electrician example is pretty good for this; just about anyone can tell when they have plugged something in to a faulty outlet, but not everyone is capable of fixing the wiring. With the education system, we have a lot of people who recognize that something is wrong, but very few people who are proposing any kind of solution. We also have a few people who want to call in plumbers (educational equivalents of venture capitalists) when we need electricians (people with experience in education), apparently under the notion that wiring is pretty similar to plumbing.

The other problem though is that it is really hard to tell if common core has actually failed. Someone else pointed out there are three main components to common core; they really should be evaluated independently. Another thing is that at the start of the experiment no criteria were laid forth to evaluate success (or failure) which makes it that much more difficult to score. Finally, without having comparable control schools to compare to common core schools, it is that much more difficult to show what kind of "failure" this has brought on. Any time you change the system there will be turbulence.

Re:Controversial because?

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Nonsense. CC is silent on the manner of grading teachers. That is simply a choice on the part of the state legislature and local school district. If the state legislature decides to enact a Procrustean regime that squashes the ability for teachers in the trenches to enact amendments to the class curriculum, then that itself is a problem regardless of whether CC is endorsed or not. In fact, we are already on that road, unfortunately, and ditching CC is not going to move us in another direction.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

No, these are parents with a tentative, at best grasp on the subjects themselves and lashing out. The biggest one I have seen

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/0...

Of course this dad, who apparently has an EE degree, and the vast majority of the readers fail to actually READ the assignment. The math does not work, and that was the point of the assignment, to find the error in how the student did the work, not try and solve it in the incorrect way the student used. BTW, the student did not separate the 1s and the 10s, and had to many 1.

Re:Controversial because?

[SuricouRaven]

"Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done."

Re:Controversial because?

[Oligonicella]

Actually, you should have bolded Pearson Those people produce horrid tests.

About a decade ago I wrote science essay tests for them. I quit because they kept asking for dumbing down. Example: They insisted that an essay on hot air balloons tell the reader what a basket was and what it was for on the balloon. The what it was for was already described functionally in the text. They wanted an explicit, dictionary type description. It was very much worse on the non-technical essay tests. Enough so that so many writers stopped, Pearson used their own editors to write the essays.

Short of it is, those are the people producing the bulk of the terrible test examples you'll find in complaints; 'Indicate the box that is correctly shaded.' with none of the boxes shaded, 'Lincoln was a Democrat.' , etc.

Re:Controversial because?

[thaylin]

Again CC does not push a technique, at best it gives examples. You do not have to use copyrighted materials, you can make your own, and the standards themselves follow this license:

The NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) hereby grant a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to copy, publish, distribute, and display the Common Core State Standards for purposes that support the Common Core State Standards Initiative. These uses may involve the Common Core State Standards as a whole or selected excerpts or portions.

Re:Controversial because?

[Jason Levine]

Not just producing horrible tests, but grading horribly. They employ near-minimum wage people to grade the exams and then tell them just how many of each grade they should get. Too many high scoring tests? You've just got to "see" that 5 out of 5 test as a 4 and that 4 out of 5 test as a 3.

Re:Controversial because?

[Jason Levine]

These tests aren't meant to spot the brightest students. They are (supposedly) meant to evaluate how much a child has learned that year. If that's the case, what child will be learning college level materials in 6th grade? If it's not the case, then people have been misled as to the purpose behind the exam. At best, the tests are just badly designed. At worst, Pearson is rigging the test to get the results that they want. Namely, that students are failing so that they can sell solutions to this "problem" to school districts.

Re:Controversial because?

[HiThere]

Not every time, but frequently enough to cause one to wonder about their goals.

OTOH, if the parents don't respect education, there isn't going to be much that a teacher can do. But it should be possible for the teacher to get them out of class if they are disruptive as well as invincibly ignorant (which doesn't mean stupid, it means believing that education isn't worth the bother).

Re:Controversial because?

[Anguirel]

Your lack of understanding comes from a flawed premise. Common Core is not a Federal thing. It is being run by a coalition of states. They had educators create guidelines for what students should know at various grade levels. Educators (good ones, even) joined in on this effort (which contradicts your point) -- most teachers, since there's no recognition as you noted, genuinely care about teaching kids, and give a ton of their time freely in pursuit of that goal. This was just another place they could do that.

Common Core does not directly stipulate curriculum or implementation. The vast majority of problems with "Common Core" are not with the Common Core itself, but the poor implementation of Common Core guidelines by For-Profit companies like Pearson, or how those guidelines were adopted by state legislatures (which generally consisted of "We'll buy this company's books and curricula and tests, and then have every school use them and if students don't do well we punish the teachers").

Re:Controversial because?

[Kaptain Kruton]

Some readers may fail to actually read the assignment. But whether you read exactly what the assignment requests or not, the parent is right in his statement that the problem used an overly complex method to teach students.

I had never even heard of a "number line" until a saw the problem shown in your link. After taking a moment, I can see how it could be used to determine an answer. However it is overly complex and takes the students in a direction that shouldn't be used because number lines cannot be used when the student moves beyond basic arithmetic. While the assignment wasn't to create a number line, it was still asking a student to realize what was incorrect with one that was given to them. This means actual students are taught to use number lines when solving basic arithmetic problems, like 427- 316 = 111. Basic arithmetic is a foundation and can typically be carried out in a very simple manner by writing one number over the other and performing the correct action on each column of digits. It is simple and can be used in their future endeavors and studies. Drawing lines with many nodes for 1's, 10's, and 100's cannot be used beyond basic arithmetic problems. Why confuse the students by adding an overly complex method of doing things when they can be taught to write two numbers and calculated the difference in a simple and easy to understand manner?

Second, when children are young and still learning a concept, they should not be shown problems that are incorrect when learning about the concept. Searching for an error and explaining it may allow a person's understanding of a topic to grow if they already understand the subject matter. However, when students are still learning the basic principles of something, they should not be shown incorrect ways of doing things. Lets say a child knows that a problem has one flaw in it, but everything else in the problem is right... just like in this homework assignment. If the child is incorrect in determining which part is flawed and which parts are correct, then the problem could actually reinforce the incorrect way of doing things.

The parent was correct in his rant. If the assignment insists on having a student determine what "Jack" did wrong when solving a math problem with an overly complex method, then the answer is that Jack should just subtract 316 from 427 and should not draw a diagram .

Re:Controversial because?

[Man On Pink Corner]

Not only that, but an excerpt for discussion purposes would certainly qualify as fair use. This whole "copyrighted test" complaint sounds like a giant smokescreen.

The Onion?

[wheeda]

Let me be the first to point out... the Onion?

Re:The Onion?

[Nidi62]

Let me be the first to point out... the Onion?

It actually has some good points to it. For example, one of the Cons is "There are easier ways to measure parents’ income". Students of wealthier families tend to do better due to a number of factors such as access to tutors, parents home more often(dont work 2 jobs/work normal business hours/etc), and just generally more stable family life. A "Pro" is the exact mirror of this: "Only biased against kids who couldn’t afford college anyway". Poorer kids (who would be less likely to afford to go to college) are more likely to not do as well as the wealthier kids. One of the more tongue in cheek Cons is that it fails to measure attractiveness, which unfortunately is a factor in how successful one can be and studies have shown more attractive people are percieved to be smarter or more qualified than they really are. People are jsut wired to be more trustful and drawn to attractive people.

Remember, the Onion is satire, and satire is always built on a foundation of truth.

Re:The Onion?

[jfdavis668]

The best sarcasm requires good research. The Onion actually did a good job of presenting the major issues, even if its intent is to entertain.

"He hasn't stopped giving."

[QuietLagoon]

Mr. Gates is still trying to buy his way into history remembering him in a good light.

Re: "He hasn't stopped giving."

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, fuck him and his charitable pursuits of providing accessible healthcare, education and reducing poverty for millions!

Re: "He hasn't stopped giving."

[cablepokerface]

Here you go: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Standardized Testing

[Roger W Moore]

Thinking about standardized testing reminds me of the Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.". Standardized testing has its problems but these are no where near as significant as the problems with everything else which has been tried.

Re:the question is

[uncqual]

The rich and poor alike get exactly one vote each. That is the cornerstone of a democracy. Of course, almost all political matters in the US are decided not via a democracy but via a representative democracy (most notable exceptions being initiatives in those jurisdictions that have them).

If the poor choose not to vote or understand who/what they are voting for, that's hardly the fault of successful people.

If a voter is swayed by political advertising (which, generally, does cost money, some of which comes from the "super rich"), they are an uninformed voter. Would they be more informed if the U.S. could figure out how to ban all political advertising? I don't think so since no one is forced to view, listen to, or read political ads any more than they are forced to view, listen to, or read ads for iPhones (and, in the case of TV and radio, the political ads seem to simply replace ads for consumer bling during "high season") - thus, political ads don't take away the opportunity for voters to inform themselves.

Interesting Fact

[Guy From V]

The Common Core Standards Initiative method has been copyrighted.

BillG Look-Alike Kid in Pro-Common Core Ad

[theodp]

The presence of a BillG look-alike kid in the pro-Common Core ad made by recent $3.7M Gates Foundation awardee the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is a nice touch!

Lots of other stuff swirling around Common Core

[ErichTheRed]

My state (New York) which had semi-decent education standards to begin with, recently switched to the Common Core curriculum and it's really stirring up a mess. Partially, it's the mandatory testing that parents are opting their children out of, but it's also being tied to a bunch of other things. For example, teachers now have to deal with the same BS performance evaluations that corporate employees do, and a huge chunk of their rating is based on these test scores. They were evaluated in the past, but it was understood that there was no objective way to evaluate teacher performance with variable student performance. Now, new teachers will lose their jobs if their classes don't do well on these tests, with no regard for whether the teacher has a bunch of losers or geniuses in their class. I'm not a teacher, but I'm definitely on the teachers' side in this case. I would hate to spend the time to get a teacher certification (not impossible, but harder in NY than many states) and have my job be at risk due to factors I can't control. For example, most new teachers can't get jobs in the nice affluent school districts because there are tons more qualified applicants who want to work there, so they usually have to start off teaching in a crappy school district. Crappy districts tend to have kids who have crappy parents. (And yes, affluent districts have helicopter parents that make teachers' lives miserable, but that's another story.) If you have a class full of students who have bad home lives, parents who don't care, or have been socially promoted for years, they're going to do badly on these standardized tests and your performance rate will suffer through no fault of your own.

The other thing I've seen is that the material used to teach the common core curriculum is really different from stuff we saw in earlier times. I think that's another big thing -- parents feel they can't help their kids with homework. However, it's the material, not the curriculum itself. Blame the educational publishers for that, not the standards.

One thing I definitely don't agree with Bill Gates on is his love of charter schools. These just suck more money away from the public system and funnel it into corporate interests' pockets, making the public system weaker. What Gates or anyone doesn't understand is that education won't improve until it's valued by everyone. The reason China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. are ahead of us in test performance isn't the curriculum -- they push their students like crazy from both directions (teachers and parents.) Kids in these countries spend many more hours in school than US kids, and have information drilled into their heads. That's what needs to happen if we want to compete with these countries in the future. In the case of India and China, school performance is basically some kids' only ticket to a better life given the population and structure of society. Things might be a little different if students in the US who didn't excel in school were permanently doomed to a life of poverty...I think the parents might care a little more.

Re:Validate that it was charitable

[king neckbeard]

The problem is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most of the bad things that happen in this world are due primarily to incompetence, not malice. So, merely having well-meaning intentions doesn't make you a positive force.

Ripping children from their homes? Seriously?

[sjbe]

Bluntly, then they shouldn't have kids -- but I don't think that's the issue.

Whether they should or should not have children is irrelevant. The fact is that they do and that child needs to be educated.

It's very difficult for a diligent single parent to 'assist their kids in succeeding', never mind one who's more apathetic.

The difficulty or lack thereof is again irrelevant. The child needs to be educated and simply dismissing the problem because of some apathetic parents is dodging the issue. Yes parental involvement matters but sometimes it doesn't happen so what do we do about that? It takes a pretty cold person to just dismiss the problem as unsolvable and blame the parents for everything.

Schools have become "food" programs where kids get 2 of their meals a day. Many are open over the summer just to provide food.

Did it occur to you that there is a good reason for that? Children need to be fed and schools for better or worse are well positioned to be a part of the solution for that. A lot of people struggle financially and getting food on the table isn't a trivial thing sometimes. Schools sometimes need to be more than just a place to learn about math and reading.

Maybe we need discuss taking kids away from parents who cant or wont provide for their kids vs. the alternative of raising an ever increasing population of people who cannot or will not take care of themselves and bring in to the world children whom they are not equipped to provide adequate care.

Sigh... Taking a child away from a parent merely because they are struggling financially is about the most heartless and brutal thing I can think of. My parents were poor at one point in their lives and you think I should have been taken away from them for that? Wow... If you think putting tens of thousands of children in foster care because they have poor parent is any kind of a sane solution then you are an imbecile.