Searching deeper into the Core Standards, the true intent is clear, “all children can and should learn to high achievement standards.“Policymakers must “endorse, fund, and recognize assessment regimes that accomplish this goal,”Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning. Really? All children can learn to high achievement standards? Our minds, IQs, learning styles, and God-given talents are so equal now that everything is possible by government fiat?
Apparently, standardized tests “fail to produce a valid and reliable measurement of what significant minorities of students actually know, especially students with disabilities, English language learners or those from varied cultural backgrounds. Without accurate measurement, accountability systems are not only ineffective, they are unethical.”(Core Standards)
It will be a fascistic world in which every person will be forced into a government-dictated and enforced, dumbed-down mold, where everybody is equally intelligent, equally capable, equally trained, equally able, and equally educated with a diploma on the wall that is not worth the paper with the fancy intaglio printing.
Forget Arne Duncan's spin of Common Core standards that they are state led, will enable students to become more competitive, teachers will be able to be more creative, all students will be equal in opportunity to go to college and schools will operate and make decisions on a local level. He promises equality and liberty for all students so everyone can attend college, even though some students have no proclivity or intellectual abilities to go to college. What can we deduce from Duncan's spin?
Goethe, a classical liberal, warned us that democracy is incompatible with liberty.
“Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time are psychopaths.“Political centralization would lead to the destruction of culture. (Hans Hermann Hoppe, Ludwig von Mises Institute)
Is this the purpose of Common Core standards? To make us all common and destroy our individual spirit?
Common Core standards are meant simply to give educators a guide as to what children at each grade level should know in order to be promoted. Additionally, Common Core Standards is an attempt to make sure that we are teaching the children the same standards across our nation. This makes it easier for all concerned should a child have to relocate from one state to another. Look at Missouri's schools' report cards! Most of the schools/districts haven't made AYP and are in corrective action. I relocated here from another state in August and my children are taking classes that they took 2 years ago in my home state! Why is Missouri so far behind?
ReplyDeleteI am a teacher and have a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction. Common Core Statndards is not the death of individualism, its just a way to keep the nation moving forward in the same direction to improve education for ALL children. Ultimately, the creativity and individualism is fostered in the classroom and at home. A good teacher will make sure that is fostered in her classroom no matter what standards are in place.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYour comments are not what I hear from many teachers. Common standards penalize high achievers while trying to bring the low achievers up. If Missouri had poor standards, it was Chris Nicastro's professional responsibility to determine what worked in a high achieving state like Massachusetts. She should have adapted and adopted what worked in Missouri. We are a state (as many are) full of educational bureaucrats waiting for the next edict to decide what to teach from a consortia or the DOEd.
When Nicastro took over in 2009, she stated 93% of MO schools made adequate or exceeded proficiency standards. So why are we penalizing these 93% schools by more and more testing, and thrusting financial unfunded costs on local districts for unproven, untested and unconstitutional mandates? The 7% should have been brought up with plans that worked for THEM. But no, ALL districts have to the SAME. That's universalism. That's common core. It will never work.
Teachers tell me they have to teach to the assessment. Children are NOT data. Children have individual needs that cannot be met because of time constraints and mandates. Do you actually think Art Teachers should have to teach by Common Core standards? Where's the JOY in education any longer? Where's the creativity? Can those be measured in a data set? They are not there and cannot be measured because joy and creativity are not the goals of a managed workforce. Common core is great for parroting students, for individual thinkers, not so much.
The bottom line: the STATES should be making decisions on standards and assessments. And education should not be tailored for a pipeline to supply the workforce.
stlgretchen- You state,"When Nicastro took over in 2009, she stated 93% of MO schools made adequate or exceeded proficiency standards." REALLY??According to WHO and who's proficiency standards?The state of Missouri???Do you really feel like our state is doing such a great job??Thanks to them we are in this MESS in the first place!Here is what I can tell you about CCSS and this is "fact" Many districts in MO are DUMPING Connected Math and adopting a more traditional math curriculum.......are you trying to say that it is a BAD thing for the kid's and somehow they are not experiencing "joy and creativity"??TRUST me Art class in the least of our worries right now!
DeleteChris Nicastro said this, not me. If she is doing such a terrible job, then she should lose her job. She should be voted out. Oh, that's right. She's appointed by the governor, who happens to be Jay Nixon.
DeleteI agree with you, the math standards have been terrible in this state. But whose fault is that? It's the STATE'S fault. It's DESE's fault. It's the State Board's fault.
What's going to happen if the magic bullet of a centralized federal consortia (it is funded by federal money so is it "really" state led)fails to give us the goal of every child going to college? Who will we go to then? The global international cabal that will then give us our educational mandates?
This is the fault of educational bureaucrats not doing their job and the fault of the Federal Department of Education handcuffing them with threats of withholding money if the districts didn't do what the Feds mandated. And you really think a larger federal program will make an ugly situation better?
From Professor Milgram, who was on the Math standards committee and refused to sign off on them. He is not the only one raising red flags.
Deletehttp://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/james-milgram-on-the-new-core-curriculum-standards-in-math/
Then for those interested in the English/Language Arts standards, another person who was on the development committee and did not sign off with concerns both on process and product:
Deletehttp://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/10/stotsky-yes-parents-were-excluded-from-developing-the-common-core/
Anonymous teacher with a doctorate is misinformed. The Common Core standards are not a guide and cannot be disconnected from the common assessments (please note the plural), and longitudinal database tracking students from preschool to the first year out of high school. The assessments linked to the standards are used for high stakes decision impacting students, schools, and teachers; as such, the curriculum is narrowed. The standards themselves are controversial, expensive, and experimental. States with stronger standards had to do a walk backward. That does not make sense. Facts are facts.
ReplyDeleteYou can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time-
ReplyDeleteAs Bernie Madoff, Barack Obama and Jon Corzine could tell you, that doesn't change with the targeted "people's" level of education. If fact those three prefer to target the more educated as they tend to have more money--
Gretchen-- I re-published this for you--good piece, thank you--
BTW I tacked a link to a funny little story at the end...
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/02/jokes-on-us.html
People and legislators pushing this garbage are nothing more than indoctrinated, politically corrected, mush filled skulls. Anyone who thinks that every one is created equal is hypnotized by left wing indoctrinational rhetoric. We don't learn the same, or at the same rate. Some don't want to learn, while others are driven to learn. Government mandates will never make robots out of a free loving society. Nor do you want to live in that world. Trying to convince the populace that such a thing is good and necessary is a socialist fairy tale. Common Core and every thing that goes with it is a socialist dream. Wake up and smell the fascism.
ReplyDelete