I’m sure it’s just me, but I firmly believe that if one wants to formulate an opinion one ought to make the effort to identify the concepts at hand before taking the word of a high school student. :rolleyes: The speaker in the linked article, who is a high school student, and clearly a romantic at heart, should not be taken as anything but the product of a misguided system. :o
Unfortunately, in reference to the last 30 years of practice, the k-12 system in the USA is a house built by teachers who largely suffer from ineptitude and chronic under achievement. Clearly they need help but they caterwaul against any kind of objective standards. :eek:
I am a huge fan of education, and it is not a reach to make a case that K-12 education in the USA stinks worse than rotted fish. I know a little about Common Core. The following article goes on in some detail about what the goals are and provides some useful information:
Common Core State Standards Initiative - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The article is a darned sight more useful and factual than the prattling student presented by the OP. The Common Core goals are entirely reasonable.
The key issue i see is that they don't go far enough. Recent history proves beyond any doubt that primary USA education sits squarely in the low middle of the pack for education on the best of years. Canada strongly outperforms the USA (and most of the world) on K-12 education. ;) That between 20% to 50% of all USA students don’t even finish high school, proves that the system in place has little aim other than to badly baby sit and train under-achievement.
THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATE: TRENDS AND LEVELS In light of this degree of professional ineptitude and utter failure by teachers, something is clearly and desperately needed. Common Core wins because it is promoted against, well, nothing but more professional ineptitude and utter failure by teachers.
I have no doubt there are many flaws in Common Core and it could be improved. Yet the demonstrated academic failure of K-12 in the USA is 100% due to teachers. No amount of increased revenue seems to improve anything, and I am happy to see some kinds of oversight coming to the mess that has been created by its progenitors and perpetuated by its “professional” participants.
The tragedy of primary education is that teachers as a profession are one of very few groups who spend 4-6 years (or more) in college, only to be underpaid and often underfunded for their entire career. These factors contribute heavily to institution-wide goals of chronic underachievement and cultural indifference that are brought daily to the children of our country. It is ironic then that many teachers would cry and condemn standards that actually create some useful goals for students and teachers.