MA Math Professor's Take on Common Core Math - It Falls Short

Setting standards is trickier business than most people think.  On the one hand standards make things easier. Imagine trying to buy a set of sheets if we hadn't chosen 4 basic sizes of bed. Finding ones to fit your bed could take far longer if there weren't such standardization, and you might have to settle for a set that was merely close enough in size to work. Of course by setting standard sizes we limited innovation in bedding. All beds are rectangular in nature (let's not bring up those custom ones in the Poconos hotels) The way my son sleeps, circular might actually be better. But we set a standard and everyone stopped there for convenience.

The same is true for education standards. Nintey plus percent of people will stop teaching or stop learning once they have met the standard. Its the nature of standards. They are limiting. You would think then that the standards writers would have shot for the highest end of skills knowing that schools will stop teaching once the students reach competence in that standard skill. Marketing hype aside, the fact that they only allow another fifteen measly percent of content to be taught on top of the standards is an indication that CCSSI developers agree with this phiosophy and believe they have shot high with Common Core standards.

A Massachusetts math professor agrees with my outlook on standards and believes Common Core's writers aimed in the wrong  place when it comes to math.

Charles Ormsby, a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, gave his general review of the CCSSI math standards to The Deseret News. He says of standards in general, "We all know that whatever standard is set, some students will exceed the standard and some will fall short — many far short."  This would seem to make the case for setting the standard as high as possible to bring the performance of all students up.

Professor Ormsby provides this explanation of why, therefore, the CCSSI math standards will ultimately shortchange k-12 students.

"It appears that Common Core standards set an expectation that students will achieve some reasonable level of competency in algebra through algebra II, but no expectation of competency in, or even a basic familiarity with, trigonometry. Whether a student has aspirations in the STEM disciplines or not, I think this is a major failing of the standard. Expectations in mathematics are being set well below the level needed to prepare students for post-secondary studies in a broad range of disciplines — not just the STEM fields.

Consider the range of likely outcomes if the standard was set, not at algebra II, but at basic competency in trigonometry... If we targeted trigonometry, then those that fall well short of the standard might at least absorb a modicum of geometry and basic algebra (a reasonable foundation for entering the trades; a path that should be more respected).

Those that fall just short of the standard will have mastered algebra II — a good foundation for accounting, health care workers, management sciences, liberal arts, etc. These students could conceivably pursue a STEM career after some remediation (e.g., taking trigonometry at a community college).

Students that hit the standard (mastery of trigonometry) would be ready to tackle calculus without remediation and therefore would be prepared to pursue either a STEM major or a serious career in, for instance, finance or economics.

A student that exceeded the standard would leave high school with a solid algebra/trigonometry foundation plus some (possibly a substantial) degree of understanding of calculus and could enter college with advanced placement credit.

This is the distribution of outcomes we should seek"  

 Here, here Professor Ormsby!

Schools can, and some will, choose to teach beyond the standards of CC. Those schools will be the exception and will only continue with the practice so long as there are conscientious passionate people pushing for it, because the main system will only require that they achieve student competency through Algebra II.  Most schools will stop there. Such is the nature of standards.

A more ominous warning comes at the end of Professor Ormsby's piece about the impact that will have on college math programs.

"The sad fact is that because students are not college-ready, colleges are dumbing down their curriculums to be student-ready. The downward spiral of expectations makes the "college ready" standard a moving/descending target.

I'll close by noting that this view from the trenches is from a trench in Massachusetts: one of the highest ranked states in the country for high school mathematics achievement. What does that say about the state of affairs in the other 49 states?"

DESE has questioned by push back against CC and stated exasperatedly "They're just standards," as if that makes them innocuous. More recently, in a piece sent to  to MO Superintendents they attempt to dismiss CC critics by saying, "So now others, as predicted by NSPRA, are attempting to define what CCSS is and these critics are turning it into a messy and misinformed political football being tossed at local school district leaders."

I don't see a lot of politics in Professor Ormsby's assessment of the standards.  Seems pretty logical and well informed to me.

Common Core State (sic) Standards

"Whoo Hoo!" The word that started a revolution in opting out of Common Core State (sic) Standards testing.

Susan Ohanian writing in the Daily Censored Whoo-Hoo! Occupy the Schools! about Common Core State (sic) Standards, details how the standards are not state led, a vehicle to establish a Global Work Force, funded primarily by Bill Gates, bipartisan in nature and a quest for a national curriculum/national test:

In response to a poverty rate that tops 90% in many urban and rural schools –and 1.6 million homeless children—many in schools with no libraries–education reformers at the White House, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Governors Association call for a radical, untried curriculum overhaul and two versions of nonstop national testing to measure whether teachers are producing workers for the Global Economy.

They call this upheaval the Common Core State (sic) Standards (CCSS) and there are two things to remember: The Common Core did not originate with the states and it is speculative and experimental–in a word, cuckoo. I use the (sic) in its title because putting the word “state” in there is a political move, a public relations ploy. Learning from President Bill Clinton’s failure to get the national test he wanted, corporate leaders and their political allies try to keep this school remake as distant from the White House as possible, insisting over and over that it’s a “grassroots initiative” –what the people asked for. Every time they say this, the press repeats it. The Common Core reality is about as far from Mom and apple pie as a zombie invasion.

The Gates connection and funding is stunning and who can deny the fact that this money is driving the current educational reform?

The Common Core State (sic) Standards are the result of hundreds of millions of dollars disbursed in carefully distributed grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation accompanied by the threat from U. S. Secretary Arne Duncan to withhold federal funds if individual states did not sign on the dotted line. I looked at two months worth of press citations praising the CCSS –August and September, 2012–and then looked up the Gates money given to those who come to praise CCSS. The list ranges from the American Federation of Teachers ($1,000,000) to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction ($823,637), from the neo-liberal Center for American Progress ($2,998,809) to the neo-conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute ($5,711,462). The PTA got money ($2,005,000); so did the National Writing Project ($2,645,593). And so on and so on. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and with money in their pockets, many are eager to sing the Common Core song and eat the funeral meats.

Although these groups all play a cheerleading role, here are the significant players in deforming school curriculum and testing and their Gates haul.

• Achieve, Inc.: $25,787,051
• The Council of Chief State School Officers: $71,302,833
• National Governors Association Center for Best Practices: $30,679,116

Chief architects of the literacy content for the Common Core content are a lawyer and David Coleman, an education entrepreneur. Coleman gained the most notoriety as he barnstormed the country preaching the importance of nonfiction and a bastardized form of New Criticism, a literary theory abandoned long ago by just about everybody except Mr. Coleman. In his presentation at the New York State Education Building in April 2011, Coleman declared that teachers must tell students: “When you grow up in this world you realize people don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” Student Achievement Partners, an outfit Coleman co-founded is now churning out Common Core curriculum. They’re bankrolled by $6,533,350 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and $18,000,000 from the General Electric Foundation. Coleman has moved on to head the College Board ($31,178,497 in Gates funds).

My state education department in Vermont urged every teacher to watch a video produced by the Council of Great City Schools ($8,496,854 from Gates) in which Coleman offers advice to the student who reads several grade levels below the complex text assigned to his class: “You’re going to practice it again and again and again and again. . . so there’s a chance you can finally do that level of work.”

Gates is taking advantage of the bipartisan push for this reform and the Federal Government's involvement in these Common Core State (sic) Standards:

Lots of school watchers believe the sole purpose of the Common Core State (sic) Standards is to drive the national test which has been on the corporate agenda for more than two decades. Although the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paid for the CCSS, the new, super-duper assessments traveling with those standards are funded by you and me. The U. S. Department of Education gave $335 million to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop computer-based tests for grades 3-12. They both plan a lot of testing, and costs of hardware and software requirements, of rewiring school buildings and buying computers that meet the specifications are on the backs of local taxpayers. The Florida state department of education recently announced an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars to develop the necessary technology infrastructure capable of delivering the tests. New York City estimates the same amount.

Although hubris seems to drive Bill Gates’ education reform ideology, it is no surprise that his foundation would find the Common Core’s huge reliance on technology attractive. Technology and the desire to put schools under the oversight and domination of a national test also motivated education reformers in September 1989, when President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting in Charlottesville, Va., for the first-ever National Education Summit. Teachers were also absent from that meeting, Instead, IBM CEO Lou Gerstner joined hands with Arkansas governor Bill Clinton to lead the effort. Gerstner and his Business Roundtable cronies got to name the problem and define the solution, which was a relabeled Business Roundtable plan calling for school choice, competition, and a massive infusion of technology. It was signed into federal law as America 2000. When it morphed into Goals 2000, President Clinton was foiled in his attempt to add a national test. Then came No Child Left Behind under President Bush the Younger and Race to the Top and the Common Core under President Obama. With each residency change at the White House, the name of ed reform has changed and the content has become more destructive to the needs of public schools and the children in them.

Ohanian provides information on how Common Core State (sic) Standards impact children.  When these theories and untested standards/assessments are used on real human beings, the results are injurious to children.

Read the entire article here and discover why "whoohoo" may be the battlecry against the educational reformers and the spark which started a parental revolt against Common Core State (sic) Standards.

The President Continues to Divide - This Time The Teachers

The White House just posted this press release on their site about a new corps of Master Teachers for STEM subjects that they are developing (highlights are mine.)

Today, the Obama Administration announced the President’s plan to create a national Science, Math, Technology, and Engineering (STEM) Master Teacher Corps. The STEM Master Teacher Corps will begin in 50 locations across the country, each with 50 exceptional STEM educators. Over the next four years the Corps will expand to include 10,000 of the best STEM teachers in the nation. In joining the STEM Master Teachers Corps, these educators will make a commitment to champion the cause of STEM education in their respective communities, and will receive additional resources to mentor math and science teachers, inspire students, and help their communities grow.

Improving America’s STEM education is one of President Obama’s top priorities.  As he has said repeatedly, efforts to improve STEM education are “going to make more of a difference in determining how well we do as a country than just about anything else that we do here.” A world-class STEM workforce is essential to virtually every goal we have as a nation – whether it’s broadly shared economic prosperity, international competitiveness, a strong national defense, a clean energy future, and longer, healthier, lives for all Americans.   If we want the future to be made in America, we need to redouble our efforts to strengthen and expand our STEM workforce.

The Obama Administration is committed to ensuring America’s students are prepared to succeed in an increasingly competitive economy. To do so, we must make sure effective, capable teachers are guiding our youth in the classroom. By creating a STEM Master Teaching Corps to inspire students, and by giving these educators the necessary resources to teach well, we are investing in America’s future.

In a roundtable today with a group of K-12 math and science teachers at the White House, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz, OSTP Director Dr. John Holdren, and PCAST Co-Chair Dr. Eric Lander announced the proposal, which the Administration will launch with the $1 billion allocated in President Obama’s 2013 budget plan currently before Congress.

At the same time, the Administration also announced the immediate dedication of $100 million from the Teachers Incentive Fund to help schools establish well-defined, attractive career paths in STEM education for teachers who excel. The program will require these highly effective teachers to model STEM instruction for their peers and take on additional responsibilities in their school districts.

Already, 30 school districts across the Nation have expressed interest in competing for this funding to boost their STEM programs.

The President’s proposals build off a carefully considered recommendation from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to applaud our Nation’s STEM educators, retain talented individuals by incentivizing STEM teaching, and encourage teacher cooperation to improve STEM education across the country.

So, just to be clear, he's creating an elite subset of Master Teachers within the teaching corps who will receive extra money and model their behavior for other teachers in just a few specific subjects that the government has decided are the ONLY things that will save our economy. That should be great for everyone in the history, English, foreign language and arts departments. No money for you. And for everyone already teaching the STEM courses looks like there's one more group you have to join if you don't want to be left behind in the pay scale. It's probably a safe bet that you  get to be one of the 10,000 future Master Teachers only if you teach a certain way and certain ideologies. Anyone else see a great way to keep global warming in the classroom?

The goal is to create a STEM worforce, not to provide worldclass education for kids, and he's seeding this effort with $1 billion, but there is no plan for how such a program will continue to be funded and by whom.

According to the list of attendees at the roundtable, teaching STEM courses is now part of our Domestic Policy. Just as a reminder to everyone, the Domestic Policy Council was started in 1993 by President Clinton and a part of its mission is to  "ensure coordination and communication among the heads of relevant Federal offices and agencies.  Which agencies need to be coordinated?  Here is the list of people who regularly attend DPC meetings.

Director - Cecilia Munoz (Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy)
Deputy Directors- Mark Zuckerman (Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy)

Jonathan Greenblatt (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation)
Joseph R. Biden (Vice President of the United States)

Kathleen Sebelius (Secretary of Health and Human Services)

Janet Napolitano (Secretary of Homeland Security)

Hilda Solis (Secretary of Labor)

Eric Shinseki (Secretary of Veterans Affairs)

Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Interior)

Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education)

Shaun Donovan (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development)

Tom Vilsack (Secretary of Agriculture)

Ray LaHood (Secretary of Transportation)

Gary Locke (Secretary of Commerce)

Steven Chu (Secretary of Energy)

Timothy F. Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury)

Wonder what tasks will fall under the "additional responsibilities" these Master Teachers will be required to take on in their school districts given this list of people who will be overseeing this program?

Can't wait to see the union response to this. 

Student Summer Employment: "Begin A Career In Progressive Politics Progressive Jobs!"

Your student might just become Presdent with a career in Community Organizing!

The above title is from a craigslist posting for student jobs.  When did community organizing become a career?  Does  community organizing make the United States STEM ready and globally competitive?  Do you remember this posting from last year about jobs for students to fight far right extremism and advance progressive causes? 

Your student has more opportunities on craigslist to advance those causes this summer.  :

Help Build the Progressive Movement $5,000-$8,000 █

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Date: 2012-05-17, 10:19AM PDT
Reply to: see below ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

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campaign jobs summer jobs human rights civil rights lgbt lgbtq rights nonprofit work jobs equality inequality progressive work progressive jobs progressive causes work for change change campaign student jobs college student jobs college jobs legal law ACLU extremist animals environment action aid global poverty rights equal healthcare liberty grassroots public constitutional history politics fundraising forward support humane humanitarian reform climate gender injustice feminism feminist activism organizing field work social civil hunger resources international domestic issue liberal democratic clean green women

• Compensation: $5,000-$8,000
• This is at a non-profit organization.
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Phone calls about this job are ok.
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 3021223458
 

**********************************************************

Maybe community organizing jobs are the only ones available to your student this summer since 100,000 jobs have been given to foreign students by the Obama administration.  From ign.com:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/24/number-of-high-school-students-with-jobs-hits-20-y/

Wow, just 16% of high school students are employed for the summer, an all time low. That is down from 32% in 1990.

Meanwhile, over 100,000 foreign students will land summer jobs here in the US under a US work sponsored travel program.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...ut-americans/2012/05/22/gIQA3D1CjU_story.html

In a time where outsourcing American jobs is viewed unfavorably, I hope future Administrations spend a bit more time trying to get American teenagers these jobs.

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Apparently the focus from these self-named grassroots, community organizing groups isn't centered on the influx of foreign teenagers taking jobs American students could be working this summer or the high unemployment of high school/college aged students.  From another craigslist posting (I'm wondering if "progressive issues you care about" include future full-time employment for American citizens): 

Get A Jump On November! Looking To Start Or Continue A Career In Community Organizing? Excited About Working Hard On Crucial Victories In 2012? Want To ... Progressive Jobs

Begin a Career in Progressive Politics

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Date: 2012-04-26, 11:39AM MDT
Reply to: see below

Looking to start or continue a career in community organizing? Excited about working hard on crucial victories in 2012? Want to learn how you mobilize thousands of concerned citizens? Grassroots Campaigns is what you are looking for.

Since 2004, Grassroots Campaigns has implemented successful field campaigns on behalf of progressive candidates, causes and organizations all over the country. This year, be a part of even larger victories!

As an Assistant Director you can mobilize a team of activists, run a successful campaign and make the most direct impact on the progressive issues you care about!

Get a jump on November!

Looking to start or continue a career in community organizing? Excited about working hard on crucial victories in 2012? Want to learn how you mobilize thousands of concerned citizens? Grassroots Campaigns is what you are looking for.

Since 2004, Grassroots Campaigns has implemented successful field campaigns on behalf of progressive candidates, causes and organizations all over the country. This year, be a part of even larger victories!

As an Assistant Director you can mobilize a team of activists, run a successful campaign and make the most direct impact on the progressive issues you care about!

Apply Now!

You will manage one of our campaign offices, build community support, educate the public and recruit new members for leading non-profit partner organizations. Grassroots Campaigns is actively working on campaigns to protect reproductive rights, gay rights, and our environment. 

In this position, you will take on a great deal of leadership and responsibility,learning how to run a field campaign. You will need strong communication andmotivational skills, work ethic and desire for political change. You must have theleadership ability to oversee a team and an orientation towards handling substantialresponsibility.

Job responsibilities include:
Recruit a team of 10-40 canvassers to represent top issue-based organizations on the front lines of theprogressive movement. Responsible for developing and implementing a plan to hire talented staff.

Manage, train and develop staff into activists and leaders in a canvass office. Work with staff to developthem into the next leaders of the progressive movement.

Canvass to raise funds and build support in the community. Lead staff by example and work on the frontlines for the most important issues facing our nation.

Requirements for Position:
Strong communication and motivational skills, work ethic, and desire for political change are essential. Candidatesmust be able to work within a team, have proven leadership ability and an orientation towards handling a lot ofresponsibility. Strong self-direction and the ability to take initiative are also necessary qualifications. Previous fieldor canvassing experience is a plus, and may qualify candidates for additional leadership positions.

To Apply:
Apply here or send a cover letter and a resume to Peter at jobs@grassrootscampaigns.com. Applications are considered on a rolling basis. Qualified applicants will be contacted about opportunities with Grassroots Campaigns within a week. We are currently hiring across the United States in: Berkeley, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Orange County, CA; Pasadena, CA; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; Denver, CO; New Haven, CT; Washington DC; Miami, FL; Orlando, FL; Chicago, IL; Amherst, MA; Boston, MA; Kansas City, MO; St. Louis, MO; Minneapolis, MN; Raleigh, NC; Morristown, NJ; Albuquerque, NM; New York, NY; Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Portland, OR; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Austin, TX; and Seattle, WA. Candidates will need to relocate to these cities

• Compensation: $24,000; health care and benefits included.
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

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STEM Students Need Their Privacy

Whether it's called collaborative learning, group projects, or collective education, we've all seen instances of modern education's love affair with kids doing projects together. It is usually justified by the notion that they will have to work together as a group in the business world so they may as well develop the skills needed to do that while they are in k-12. However, if the future focus of American education, the course work that is going to save our economy, is STEM courses, that justification may just have to be jettisoned. A now famous study, Coding War Games, looked at programmers (you know, people that excel at a STEM subject) in 92 companies and found that those who had a greater degree of privacy and autonomy were happier and more productive. Our society is traveling down a path that promotes, what author Susan Cain calls, Groupthink, the idea that creativity and achievement are arrived at by committee or through brainstorming sessions. But in the creative and technology world, this strategy may in fact be counterproductive and our current education process may be training our STEM students for failure.

In her new book, Quiet, The Power of Introverts, Cain sheds light on the introvert mind and shows how there is a currently a cultural bias against introverts.

"It’s playing out in schools and workplaces where everyone is expected to sit and work together. This enforced collectivism, she explained, in which nobody has a room of their own any longer, is creating a socialized, “groupthink” culture in which we are no longer thinking for ourselves."

This is not to say that introverts should be left alone to create and problem solve.  A balance in all things is necessary.  In the New York Times, Ms. Cain reminds us of the introverts role as she tells the story of the technical genius behind Apple, Steve Wozniack.

"Rewind to March 1975: Mr. Wozniak believes the world would be a better place if everyone had a user-friendly computer. This seems a distant dream — most computers are still the size of minivans, and many times as pricey. But Mr. Wozniak meets a simpatico band of engineers that call themselves the Homebrew Computer Club. The Homebrewers are excited about a primitive new machine called the Altair 8800. Mr. Wozniak is inspired, and immediately begins work on his own magical version of a computer. Three months later, he unveils his amazing creation for his friend, Steve Jobs. Mr. Wozniak wants to give his invention away free, but Mr. Jobs persuades him to co-found Apple Computer.

The story of Apple’s origin speaks to the power of collaboration. Mr. Wozniak wouldn’t have been catalyzed by the Altair but for the kindred spirits of Homebrew. And he’d never have started Apple without Mr. Jobs.

But it’s also a story of solo spirit. If you look at how Mr. Wozniak got the work done — the sheer hard work of creating something from nothing — he did it alone. Late at night, all by himself."

What does this mean for education? For starters, the organization of the classroom into learning pods of grouped desks may work for some students but not for introverts.  It should not be accepted norm.

Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it. 

Maybe the incidences of students to acting out, being  distracted or taking a very long time to get their work done are actually due to the teacher's use of work groups.  This use of groputhink in was taken to the extreme in one class.

In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.

Anyone who has sat on a committee that was charged with reaching a consensus will know the ultimate frustration in this scenario.  Cain's book says groupthink may have its place, but it is a very specific place. She points to studies that have shown that the best brainstorming is done by extremely large groups (think the internet), but that individual contributions to this mass collection are often developed in private.

Back in the classroom where the teachers are forcing group projects under the guise that this is developing useful job and coping skills, consider this study by Marilyn Ford and Jenny Morice.   They looked at the perceived fairness group assignments in class.  Their study showed the greatest dissatisfaction with group projects came from the highest performing students.  This is not surprising.  The second highest dissatisfaction level comes from the lowest performing students who are unhappy at the frequent complaints and efforts of their teammates to make them work. The same study also found that teachers were the least aware of problems in work groups. This was partly explained by the students perception that bringing these issues to the attention of the teachers was pointless as the teachers just told them to work it out. In the business world, slackers are not tolerated for long because they bring down the productivity of everyone. The world of education can't boot the slackers out.  Teachers telling the kids to "work it out themselves" is a cop out for their inability to find a way to motivate the unmotivated student. Not exactly teaching the kids a real world skill, unless that skill is telling co-workers "not my problem."

Did the old layout of the classroom, where every desk was an island, have some merit? Could charter or private schools have a leg up on public schools because they can group kids into the two categories,  highly social learners and introverts, and allow each group work in environments that allow them to progress more rapidly? If public schools could do this, could they have an impact on achievement at the low low cost of rearranging the classroom furniture and providing independent study options?

Technology is not just centered in problem solving.  It also involves an element of dreaming, of creativity. This is one of the reasons America has continued to excel in technology.  We allow our students to dream the impossible. Like Steve Wozniak, we ask the question, "If you could create anything for the future, what would it be?" Other countries, who we are so fond of comparing ourselves to, ask, "Have you memorized information that everyone already knows?"  This gives them great scores on things like the PISA test, but leaves them to wait for someone else to develop the next great "earth changing" thing and then copy it.

STEM subjects may hold the promise of resurrecting America, but only if we allow the introverts who are attracted to those subjects to work in the way they need to work to excel.

This Chinese Education Video Provides an Educational Look at how RTTT and Common Core Standards Might Operate in the United States

With all this hoopla about education in China generated by the PISA exam, here is what China is thinking about talking about its own education system. The very first part of the video focuses on stop math Olympics used for middle school entrance and the rest of the video is about reform in rural schools.



Arne Duncan wants us to be more globally competitive. To do so, we are being mandated via Common Core standards into a nationalized push for standards, assessments and curriculum. We've been told we need to be competitive with the Chinese and become Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) ready. Every child is expected to go to college and America will be great again...if only we radically transform the public education system in this country to become more like China.

Chinese educators in this video are commenting how their students absolutely detest the "math Olympics" they were subjected to in class and in after school tutoring. The pressure for children to score well is intense as these scores determine middle school placement. The Chinese extol the fact American students are good math students because they study it because they LIKE it, not because they have to study math. At the 4:42 mark, the educator remarks: "But in other countries, it is purely a personal pursuit based on interests".

At the 4:57 mark he continues talking about the Chinese high stakes testing for placement by saying: "I''m completely against it using filter for advancing students and evolution schools, it is wrong....But I'm not against those with GIFTS in math or have a strong interest in math to pursue these endeavors."

China has decided to do away with this high stakes math testing into prestigious middle schools to make the playing field more level between rural schools and city schools. Entrance exams do not contain the math Olympic questions since it was not fair for rural students who did not have the opportunity for extra study.

But then again....the video goes on to report some parents are still exposing their children to the Math Olympics tutoring. They are going against the "common" and expected way of educating their children. How does the Chinese education official respond to this knowledge? What will happen to those going against the mandates of the state? He tells the reporter at the 8:10 mark: "In the past, it was an added bonus point, now it is not allowed, if a principal does it this way, he will get fired...if a teacher does it, he'll need to write a confession, he continues the wrong way, and starts supplemental classes...any policy decision, according to democratic centralism, most of the comrades will follow...But there will always be people not following the rules, then it would require institution, discipline and laws to enforce it." There is no tolerance from the common expectations of administrators, teachers, parents and students.

The latter half of the video talks about the redistribution of highly effective principles from highly effective city schools to failing rural schools. It is reminiscent of America's Race to the Top mandates.

What might happen if, in America, students, parents and teachers do not follow the "common" method of education? We might look to how China handles their troublemakers. If we're determined to become global in our approach to education, we might as well just follow China's example, right?

We're on our way to the Chinese method of educating students via RTTT, Common Core Standards and other federal educational mandates. These "educational reforms" trumpeted by this administration, Arne Duncan and progressive conservatives seem to follow the definition of "democratic centralism" used in China:

under the leadership of Joseph Stalin from 1928, democratic centralism was much more “centralist” than “democratic,” as party congresses became infrequent occasions for rubber-stamping decisions made by the top party leadership.

One Word: Plastics. And the Gentle Art of Seduction.

Do you remember this famous scene from the Graduate?

One Word: Plastics. It was a great opportunity according to Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke) as he talks to the young graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) in 1967.

Times have certainly changed in four decades. Now "plastics" is tossed around in the same sentence with the words "boycott" and "petition" by elementary children on Earth Day. Here is the video with the song performed by children at Riverwood Elementary in Cordova, TN:

"The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can't treat the planet like a garbage heap,
Don't wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.
Recycle, bicycle, don't you drive by yourself,
Don't buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.
Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That is, we mess it up here, there's nowhere else we can go.
Don't shrug your shoulders, say "what can I do"?
Only one person can do it, and that person is you!"

I have a couple of thoughts about this little ditty: plastics are recyclable materials, like paper. When did a recyclable material become the target of boycotts? Do we want students to boycott and petition paper producers because the production of paper can cause pollution and add to trash collection? How many thousands of people will be unemployed if boycotts/petitions/regulatory actions are undertaken to weaken the industry?

Isn't STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) a HUGE push by this administration so the United States can become more globally competitive? I guess a student from this school could study boycotting and petitioning instead of learning how to become a scientist to help in our manufacturing abilities. That will certainly help our country be competitive, right?

Maybe the better idea for these children and teachers on Earth Day is not to malign an industry but to learn how to take care of resources and learn how to recycle instead of marginalizing a product. And perhaps the teachers should clue them in to how if industries are shut down, jobs are lost and the government has to pay unemployment to the people who lost the jobs it helped phase out.

Benjamin Braddock was seduced by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). I wonder if these children have been seduced by political correctness.