The Daily News – by Neal Mccluskey , Williamson Evers AND Sandra Stotsky
The Common Core — effectively national math and English curriculum standards coming soon to a school near you — is supposed to be a new, higher bar that will take the United States from the academic doldrums to international dominance.
So why is there so much unhappiness about it? There didn’t seem to be much just three years ago. Back then, state school boards and governors were sprinting to adopt the Core. In practically the blink of an eye, 45 states had signed on.
But states weren’t leaping because they couldn’t resist the Core’s academic magnetism. They were leaping because it was the Great Recession — and the Obama administration was dangling a $4.35 billion Race to the Top carrot in front of them. Big points in that federal program were awarded for adopting the Core, so, with little public debate, most did.
Major displeasure has come only recently, because only recently has implementation hit the district level. And that means moms, dads and other citizens have recently gotten a crash course in the Core.
Their opposition has been sudden and potent — with several states now considering legislation to either slow or end implementation, and Indiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan having officially paused it.
There are good reasons a backlash is now in full swing.
First, creation and adoption of these standards has violated the traditions of open debate and citizen control that are supposed to undergird public schooling.
Though preliminary drafts of the standards were released to the public, the standards were written behind closed doors by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — private organizations — and copyrighted. There is also no public record of the meetings available.
Adoption was then strong-armed by the Obama administration via Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind waivers that the feds granted states.
Second, the Core claims to be “internationally benchmarked,” but supporters can’t name a country to which it is pegged. In addition, according to Stanford mathematician James Milgram, the math standards would put kids two years behind their top-scoring international peers by grade seven.
Third, there is little evidence that setting national standards yields superior outcomes. Supporters argue that most countries that beat us on international exams have national standards. True, but so do most countries that finish below us.
There is little deeper research on this, but what there is suggests that once you control for variables such as income and culture, national standards have no effect.
There isn’t anything common in the thoughts of individuals but the natural gift to be free.That’s what we have in common.Individuality.Got along without department of education ,smart enough to know we don’t need government but still they try to shit you that you need to pledge allegiance since you’re a child.War the fools say makes us safe.free trade the wise man replies despite his public education to the contrary.Feed on peace and trade or starve on sanctions and war.Waylon Jennings said life just ain’t as righteous as it used to be before when your army’s out of gas.9/11 false flag/federal reserve false currency/I’d say the government’s in a lot of trouble.Thank God it ain’t my government .
Common Core is another deceptive shackle. Standards preoccupy us, and though this has been true of public education for decades, the noose is tightening now. True learning, development of critical thinking and creativity, only takes place in a mental/spiritual “space” of freedom. We are being taught to love our enslavement, not realizing that’s what it is. Freedom = slavery. Etc.
Artistic and inventive creativity requires unfettered blocks of time and space, without scrutiny or people telling you you are doing it “wrong.” Common Core only allows for one, right way of doing things, which is in opposition to this regard for individual, creative space.
Peer criticism can be beneficial, but only once these peers have also been allowed the same freedom to develop thoughts and hear the muse, and understand the process. Collaboration can then occur.
Top down, boot-on-the-face molding of people into slaves is what this is. The individual is killed or perhaps irrevocably stifled, leaving only the animated machine of the physical body, to do the bidding of TPTB.
No one knows how to learn anymore. Why are we looking to other countries for our standards? Why not look to our not-too-distant past of innovation? Oh, I guess we’ve offshored all that, complicit in our own demise. Throw up our hands, and surrender, not realizing that some of us are still alive and kicking and understand what’s going on, even if we have trouble articulating it.
We have everything we need right here. Within us and our huge, beautiful country. And the only way the sociopaths succeed is by pulling the wool over our eyes. And to hasten that, overregulate us into subservience and dumb us down with chemical poisons in water, food and “medicines.” We don’t need Common Core — we need to get rid of the sociopaths and the poisons.
Texas has not adopted Common Core, thank you God, and my education major daughter should thank You as well…I homeschooled her and her older brother, and I must say that I doubt if homeschoolers in general will adopt this nonsense. People who homeschool usually do it for two reasons: one, they want control over their kids’ education; two, they see the individuality of their kids and want that individuality to shine out over the collectivism that ultimately is public school.
Good for you, DL. My sister has homeschooled her two girls from day one.
Naturally, the so-called ‘government’ is doing its best to eliminate homeschooling altogether.
They can’t afford to have too many critical thinkers out there.
Bad for business.