Review of "Common Core"

[Botnst]

Nicely done, kid: TN Student Speaks Out About Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, and Educational Data - YouTube

[elchivito]

Right on the money. Thanks for that link!

Ultimately, and in spite of CC, NCLB or any other new "standards" the bean counters care to impose, when the classroom door closes good teachers will do what good teachers have always done.

[Botnst]

The backwash of public demand for improved education is the stupid-ass imposition of "objective metrics". This is how a bureaucracy approves of its own performance. It has little to do with teaching kids.

[MS Fowler]

Originally Posted by Botnst

The backwash of public demand for improved education is the stupid-ass imposition of "objective metrics". This is how a bureaucracy approves of its own performance. It has little to do with teaching kids.

Agree--Maryland has continually ranked very high in those metrics, but it's because the teachers are supervised to teach to the test. Education here is not poor, but the real level is masked by the tests and the preparing of the students.

[kerry]

Right on, brother.

[link]

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. 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.

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.

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.

[kerry]

Students not graduating from high school is the fault of the teachers?? What planet do you live on? What would you do if you had a child who dropped out of high school? Blame it on the teachers and let the kid go on her merry way?

[elchivito]

Originally Posted by link

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. 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.

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.

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.

I don't know a little about CC, I know a lot about it. I deal with it professionally on a daily basis right now.
The kid is right on.

[kerry]

I see it as by-product of the expansion of the managerial class into education. The managerial class has the general attitudes expressed in Taylor's Scientific Management. The managerial class has the knowledge and the working class needs to be controlled, manipulated and goaded into following the processes established by management. This may work in a production line environment (although it dehumanizes even there) but it is totally off the mark in education where the 'working class' (teachers) are the experts and can't simply be goaded into obeying orders to produce a superior product.

[martureo]

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

Agree--Maryland has continually ranked very high in those metrics, but it's because the teachers are supervised to teach to the test. Education here is not poor, but the real level is masked by the tests and the preparing of the students.

As someone related to and friends to many teachers in Maryland I can tell you that most want to quit because of the pressure these types of curriculum place on them.

One, a good friend of mine has been teaching for 30 years. Recent changes in curriculum requirements made him decide this was his last year.

[MTUpower]

Originally Posted by elchivito

I don't know a little about CC, I know a lot about it. I deal with it professionally on a daily basis right now.
The kid is right on.

X2, but more accurate is that link's comments are well meant but he is wrong. I'll take your in the field expertise (and my wife's) over his good intention views.

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by link

Yet the demonstrated academic failure of K-12 in the USA is 100% due to teachers.

I could agree and disagree with much of what you wrote until this comment. Clearly you don't have a clue.

- Peter.

[kerry]

Originally Posted by martureo

As someone related to and friends to many teachers in Maryland I can tell you that most want to quit because of the pressure these types of curriculum place on them.

One, a good friend of mine has been teaching for 30 years. Recent changes in curriculum requirements made him decide this was his last year.

Happening in lots of places. My wife's take is that there it is a deliberate attempt to rid large districts of higher priced experienced teachers and replace them with inexpensive recent college graduates. My wife quit a little over a year ago. Her students frequently won district wide awards yet the district was sending recent college graduates into her classroom to monitor, evaluate her and tell her how to teach. She found it insulting and degrading.
It's not just the curriculum. It's the managerial policies associated with the curriculum changes. I've been involved in core curriculum for many years. Teacher driven core curriculum has many benefits but the stuff going on in K-12 education at the moment has virtually none of them.

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by kerry

Happening in lots of places. My wife's take is that there it is a deliberate attempt to rid large districts of higher priced experienced teachers and replace them with inexpensive recent college graduates.

This is happening in our district too. Though possibly less of a deliberate policy than just a misguided assumption that "technology" is the key to the future and that college kids are more capable of using it in a teaching environment than veteran teachers.

Though of course it does have the salutory effect - from the districts point of view - of reduced cost. Also I might add it means a bunch of greenhorns who don't know any better and can be more easily moulded to the districts "philosophy du jour" than veterans who know the reality of the classroom.

- Peter.

[kerry]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Also I might add it means a bunch of greenhorns who don't know any better and can be more easily moulded to the districts "philosophy du jour" than veterans who know the reality of the classroom.

- Peter.

Yes, indeed.