Is Hairstyling a Common Core Career Ready 5th Grade Standard? Flat Irons Needed?

What 5th graders are learning in a Missouri classroom.

The following information is from a Missouri mom.  Is this an example of "College and CAREER ready" the Common Core proponents are talking about?  This type of education will sure make our kids globally competitive!  It just might not be in the fields you thought Common Core was pushing:

Our kids can't read....most can't do math any more...we can't find time to teach history, but we sure can teach them how to straighten hair.  This note sent from school was shared with me by a mom in our district.  On the off days from hair class 101, her daughter is learning about choreography in 5th grade. 

Alarmed yet?  Welcome to Common Core and the 21 Century learners.  College and CAREER readiness.  Like this mom said...if they don't teach her daughter to read or do math, she will have learned necessary skills to maybe become a stripper someday all while in the 5th grade.  

Not funny, but you have to laugh.  

Hair Styling 101

Week of 9/10/13 -9/12/13

Supplies will be needed.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday:  Flat Irons (also known as straighteners).

Please bring your flat iron to class.  We will learn how to properly straighten hair and various hair styles we can create using the flat iron.  Also, if you use hair spray, spray bottle (of water), or straightening protective products then bring those along with a comb or a brush.

Here's an example from Kentucky 6th grade Common Core standards (pg 2) and how flatirons are incorporated into the standards and classroom activities.  Maybe the Missouri classroom's activity will incorporate this same standard and provide "show and tell": 

RI6.3 Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).	Analyze	How a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated (examples or anecdotes)	Text	Analyze	Provide an article about how to choose a new small appliance. This might be a new drill, chainsaw, flat iron or coffeemaker. Ask the students to read the article and determine if this appliance would meet their needs. http://voices.yahoo.com/how-choose-best-power-drill- 33130.html?cat=6 http://www.ehow.com/how_2309427_choose-your- chainsaw.html http://www.ehow.com/how_2019582_choose-flat-iron.html http://ezinearticles.com/?Choosing-A-Coffee-Maker---Tips-On- Finding-The-Right-Features&id=63840 Other appliances or other articles can be found by conducting a Google search.
RI6.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical	Determine	Meaning of words and phrases	Text	Understand	Present the following scenario: Your employer has instituted a new vacation policy. You have been asked to read it and sign a statement saying that you understand it.  Read this policy. Ask, “Do you have any questions about the policy?” “Do you have any questions about the words used?” Ask questions to determine if the students understand words like accrued, allotments, and minimum. A sample policy can be found by conducting a Google search of sample vacation policy. One

 

Aren't you just blown away with these rigorous standards that instruct students how to use flatirons, coffee makers, and chainsaws?  Watch for notes home on sending coffee, filters and logs so kids can learn how to make coffee and cut timber.  Isn't Common Core great?

UPDATED: A reader sent in this youtube video showing the dangers of using hot electrical items in hair.  We hope the school has a large liability policy.  From youtube and Hair Iron Fail:


 

Common Core "Rigor" Nonsense Talking Points. Blah blah blah blah blah.

This is the definition of Common Core rigor.

Read this blog's Common Core definition of rigor.  From Beyond the “Rigor” Buzz: Myths and Truths about Rigor in Common Core Classrooms:

(MEW's comments are highlighted in yellow and contain links with further information)

Rigor is a popular education buzzword – especially right now with the implementation of Common Core standards. Politicians, corporate leaders, and educators at all levels have echoed some version of President Obama’s words from 2009: “It is time to expect more from our students.” Rigor is a key element of CCSS, and as students head back to school over the next few weeks, it’s being discussed in classrooms all over the country.

But what is rigor? Is it higher expectations for achievement? Is it harder questions and more homework?

No. But when many people think of rigor, they’re falling prey to some false beliefs about what rigor means in the classroom.

Common myths about rigor

•Students must do more work. Oftentimes “more work,” including increased homework, really means low-level activities and repetition.
•Students need to solve problems independently. Learning to figure out a problem is important, but that doesn’t mean the teacher shouldn’t offer support and help guide students in the right direction.

• Rigor is just one more thing to do. Many educators view adding rigor to their instruction as an entirely separate undertaking.

The truths (and the good news) about rigor
Let’s look at how a few leading academics and educational foundations define rigor:
• “A demanding yet accessible curriculum that engenders critical-thinking skills as well as content knowledge.” – MDRC, a social policy nonprofit MDRC  has received Gates funding
• Students should “raise questions, think, reason, solve problems and reflect.” – Beverly L. Hall, 2009 National Superintendent of the Year  Beverly Hall was at the center of the teaching cheating scandal in Atlanta
• Students “should be asked to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, evaluate – using that knowledge.” – Education Trust  Education Trust received Gates money

The good news about these definitions is that rigor is not something extra you need to do, nor is it something that needs to be so rigid or difficult that children (and teachers) suffer. So what are some truths about rigor?

• Rigor means more challenging work instead of just “more work.” Each student learns differently, but incorporating elements of differentiated instruction will challenge students at a level that’s comfortable for them.

• Rigor means supporting students. Rigor happens somewhere between fully independent learning and spoon-feeding answers. Forming student groups and offering help builds a classroom atmosphere where students feel safe asking questions. Teachers can accept high-level responses or ask more probing and extended critical thinking questions: “Have you considered . . .?” “Why did you assume that?”  It doesn't matter if 3 x 4 = 11.  Just explain your answer and you will get credit: even if it's wrong.

• Rigor means incorporating critical thinking strategies. When you incorporate critical thinking strategies into your classroom (e.g., scaffolding thinking, assessing thinking, group discussion), you’re automatically encouraging rigor. You’re engaging students, and moving them beyond basic recall tasks into higher-level thinking.

If you’re incorporating critical thinking strategies into your lesson plans, you’re already providing rigorous instruction. Engaging students, challenging them, and creating an environment that encourages curiosity and questions will provide students with skills like inquisitiveness, determination, and creative thinking – all skills they need to be lifelong learners. 

Here's my answer to this article of talking points not based on best practice, research or data.  I like my definition of rigor:

Missouri Education Watchdog

With all due respect, this is PR nonsense. The rigor you speak will leave students behind international peers in math by 2 years BY 8TH GRADE according to the lead validator, Dr. James Milgram. He was the only mathematician on the validation committee and refused to sign off on them because they are "substandard" standards.

The standards were found to be developmentally inappropriate for young children. Oops. I guess CCSSO didn't have that on its website. Here it is: http://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/25/gesell-institute-the-common-core-standards-are-wrong-for-young-children/

Dr. Sandra Stotsky also refused to validate the ELA standards. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/12/questionable-quality-of-the-common-core-english-language-arts-standards

Rigor doesn't mean what you state. Here is the definition of rigor from Merriam-Webster:

a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity (2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness (3) : severity of life : austerity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigor

Maybe  you'd like to visit this blog and leave your comments on rigor, Bill Gates and Common Core?

Common Core Standards Creation: "I'm Just No Good at Kindergarten": Part II

Maybe this is progress you don't want for your kindergartner. Is this what Common Core represents?

 

Do you remember Claire Wapole's article about her daughter testing in kindergarten with computers and her daughter's tearful statement about her performance?  From  I'm just no good at kindergarten, just no good at all:

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick.  It took a half dozen or so clicks before the window closed and the little test taker with the big bow in her hair was back to her assessment. This was played out again, and again and again, throughout the duration of the test. In a perfect world, where all the computers worked, testing conditions would be less frustrating. But it's the real world, and a five year old could click on the wrong thing, and accidentally leave the test. Even when they do click on the button they want, the computers don't always respond to their commands. I know it's a computer or mouse glitch, but I can't help but wonder how many of these kids think it's their fault. I heard "I can't do this" frequently. "Yes you can". I said. "You are doing great. It's the computer, not you." The preferences or options screens were accidentally opened quite often. Other computer issues complicated the situation too. Some kids had to leave one computer and find another one, or switch out mouses. Computers fail, it’s a fact, but a lot of these little people felt the fault was theirs.
 
In the midst of all of this, I walked past my daughter.  She looked up at me, her face red from crying, I could see that tears had been collecting at her collar "I just can't do this," she sobbed.  The ill fitting headsets, the hard to hear instructions, the uncooperative mouse, the screen going to command modes, not being able to get clarification when she asked for it… her little psyche had reached it’s breaking point. It took just two days of standardized testing for her to doubt herself, quickly trading a love of learning for the shame of incompetence.  Later on when I picked her up after her long seven-hour day, she whispered into my shoulder "I'm just not smart mom. Not like everyone else. I'm just no good at kindergarten, just no good at all.”

This is heartbreaking, isn't it?  Early childhood experts stated three years ago that Common Core standards were developmentally inappropriate for this age group.  This inappropriateness includes the mandate to use computerized assessments.  You can read the article above for more examples of teary children and frustration by kindergartners.

Here is a story from a former kindergarten teacher, Christine Gerzon (who quit because of Common Core), whose observations support what Claire Wampole observed in her daughter's kindergarten class.  From boston.com and Pressure-cooker kindergarten:

Pressure? This is kindergarten, the happy land of building blocks and singalongs. But increasingly in schools across Massachusetts and the United States, little children are being asked to perform academic tasks, including test taking, that early childhood researchers agree are developmentally inappropriate, even potentially damaging. If children don’t meet certain requirements, they are deemed “not proficient.” Frequently, children are screened for “kindergarten readiness” even before school begins, and some are labeled inadequate before they walk through the door.

This is a troubling trend to an experienced educator like Gerzon, who knows how much a child can soak up in the right environment. After years of study and practice, she’ll tell you that 5-year-olds don’t learn by listening to a rote lesson, their bottoms on their chairs. They learn through experience. They learn through play. Yet there is a growing disconnect between what the research says is best for children -- a classroom free of pressure -- and what’s actually going on in schools.

Take the example of a girl who was barely 5 when she entered Gerzon’s classroom. She didn’t know her ABCs, but one day in class she made up a song and taught it to the other children. But because of new requirements, “I had to send a letter to her parents saying that [she] is not proficient,” says Gerzon. “You tell me that [she] is not proficient in language skills!” The Concord resident, who usually exudes a gentle presence, bristles. “It’s destructive, even abusive. That’s a pretty strong word, but what do you call it when you take a group of children and you force them to do something that they are not developmentally ready to do? What do you call that? It’s abusive.”

Psychologist and early childhood expert David Elkind, author of The Hurried Child and The Power of Play, echoes Gerzon. When children are required to do academics too early, he says, they get the message that they are failures. “We are sending too many children to school to learn that they are dumb,” says Elkind, a professor emeritus at Tufts University. “They are not dumb. They are just not there developmentally.”

Read more here.   Other educators are quoted and they fear for kindergartners, especially those not ready to read/write, antsy boys who can't stay in their seats or students whose first language is not English.  Do the standards predict disaster for these 5 year olds?  Five years old seems awfully young to think of yourself as a failure but that is the message these educators are predicting these children will take with them from their kindergarten experience.  Forget the idea kindergarten will make children "college ready".  Kindergarten will make children emotional wrecks.

Send these stories to your school board members, superintendents, state legislators and ask them why they still support Common Core standards.  We are setting up our youngest children up for failure and strict adherence to the standards which do not allow creativity.  I guess those standards ARE rigorous as rigor is associated with death, strictness and uncomfortableness.  From merriam-webster.com:

Definition of RIGOR

1

a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity (2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness (3) : severity of life : austerity

b : an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty

2

: a tremor caused by a chill

3

: a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable; especially : extremity of cold

4

: strict precision : exactness rigor

>

5

a obsolete : rigidity, stiffness

b : rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli

c : rigor mortis

Are the Common Core masters creating death of the spirit?  Parents, do you want to send your 5 year old to public kindergarten under the "rigorous" Common Core standards? 

MAJOR ALERT for Private School and Homeschool Parents. The Plan: Your Child WILL be Taught Common Core. WITH UPDDATE

State education departments can gain control of private education and homeschooling through more regulations, oversight, reporting requirements, teacher licensure mandates

Do you think you have freedom to educate your child as you, the parent, sees fit?  Do you look to the State for educational development/delivery for your child or have you selected private/homeschool options?  If you have chosen private/homeschool options, it may not be  much different than the public school education offered by the state of Alabama.   The state not only controls the public development/direction of education, it will also control both private/homeschool educational development/direction. 

Watch this Alabama Department of Education Private School Licensure Meeting at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/35665549.


 A reader contacted me and wrote:

This video of the Alabama State Department Education meeting with private, church, and home school representatives will make your blood boil.  They are creating a new department, charging new fees, implementing unprecedented oversight and reporting requirements, and monitoring the list of those schools that do not register with the State Department of Education.  If you do not register, your students are unable to attend a postsecondary institution (2-or 4-year).  Home schoolers MUST report attendance, grades, coursework, etc. to the local school superintendent on a regular basis.  I could go on and on.  Please take the time to watch it!  Please share this with everyone in our group and others...

You can scroll down on this link and read the Facebook comments.  Common Core will be adhered to through these new regulations for private schools and homeschooled students.  From a reader:

Let's just avoid the question on the HS front. Yes, you can teach your kids, as you like, as long as the umbrella school complies with everything needed around the 26-28 mark to get the license. Didn't that list of requirements include that all teachers must be state certified before they would offer the Umbrella school's license? Didn't it also clearly say that the curriculum must comply to state standards or as we all know the COMMON CORE standards? If our Umbrella School has to provide a list of curriculum wouldn't that again take the child's education out of the parent's hands? Doesn't that mean I have to teach what my cover school tells me to teach and I need to be certified by the state? I am a little shocked that this is being discussed in AL of all places, so maybe just maybe, the distress I'm currently feeling is keeping me from looking at this objectively. Does anyone else find it ironic that this guy was hired about the same time our state school board adopted the CC to receive additional federal funding. Why didn't this get down to the local level where our local elected school board reps could review all of this and bring it to our attention? Are they really working for our children or were they looking at all of those new federal dollars that would be lining their pocket and the AEA? Just curious and like I said maybe my shock is getting the best of me now.

These private schools and homeschooling groups should know what is store for them in Alabama.   It is mentioned around the 28 minute mark or so that tutoring must be done by an Alabama licensed teacher.  Does this mean students cannot be taught by a parent who does not possess a state teaching certification?

We warned about this type of power grabbing that we spotted in a previous virtual school bill in Missouri.  From Homeschoolers, Beware of Educational Carrots Offered by Virtual School Courses:

We recently wrote "Will Home Schooled and Private Schooled Students have to take Common Core Assessments" and state legislation about this issue being questioned by a private school in Deland, Florida.  The school was requesting clarification from the Governor about language which seemingly indicated private school credits would not transfer to public schools in certain courses because the private school tests were not under the same assessments (common core) as the public schools.

Missouri Senator Jane Cunningham introduced SB706  in January 2012 that should have triggered concern in the homeschooling community.  The bill contained language for virtual schooling which has been offered to home schoolers by various school districts:

A student may enroll in the virtual courses or programs
2 offered by any virtual education provider or school district in Missouri
3 that meets the standards of the department of elementary and
4 secondary education and is accredited. The department may offer its
5 own virtual courses or programs. Any student who enrolls in a virtual

6 course or program under this section shall be considered a public

7 school student and shall take the components of the statewide

8 assessments under section 160.518 that relate to the virtual course or

9 program in which they are enrolled.

The virtual nonresident student's
10 district of residence shall pay the school district or charter school
11 providing such virtual education an amount equal to seventy-two and
12 one half percent of the previous year's statewide average current
13 expenditure per average daily attendance.

The Alabama Facebook commenter is correct.  "Statewide assessments" = Common Core assessments.  Bureaucrats will try to tell you assessments are taken from "Missouri Learning Standards" or "Alabama Learning Standards" to hide the fact that they are aligned to Common Core State Standards.  

Is a government entity dictating how/what private schools/homeschooling parents teach coming soon to your state? Private school parents and homeschool parents better watch their state education departments closely and be prepared to stop this invasion of their freedom to educate their children in the manner in which they deem appropriate. 

Update:  Here's a great link from the36review.com on the Alabama decision:

The Alabama State Department of Education is also creating a new unit:  The Office of Non-public Schools.  This new office will fall under the Office of Supporting Services.

This means we are also treated to the Orwellian lunacy of a very publicly funded “Office of Non-public Schools.” 

Why should public education create an office for non-public schools? 



Update July 28:  Parents receive reprieve for now.