Comments on: Alternative Needed to Common Core: An Additional Consortium for ‎Common Standards

By: The Educated Guess » The rush to common-core standards

The Educated Guess » The rush to common-core standards — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:34:47 +0000

[...] only a draft of career and college readiness standards for high school graduates. And it has been sharply criticized by Palo Alto engineer Ze’ev Wurman, who helped develop California’s math standards, and Bill [...]

By: Cheryl van Tilburg

Cheryl van Tilburg — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:10:30 +0000

Yes, a thousand times, yes. Parents would line up behind those types of standard, as opposed to the dreck being bandied about by the Common Core.

By: Rethink common core standards « Joanne Jacobs

Rethink common core standards « Joanne Jacobs — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:07:54 +0000

[...] common core standards aren’t good enough, write Bill Evers and Ze’ev Wurman on Jay P. Greene’s [...]

By: Will Fitzhugh

Will Fitzhugh — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:46:48 +0000

Wouldn’t it be rare and wonderful if the alternative national standards suggested that our students read at least one complete nonfiction book each year and write at least one serious research paper every year!

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
fitzhugh@tcr.org
http://www.tcr.org

By: Niki Hayes

Niki Hayes — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:51:46 +0000

I retired after 28 years in public education as a math teacher and principal because I had finally admitted to myself that children were not the reason for public schools to exist. The system is now the domain of “professional” adults from a wide sector (federal department of education, state capitols and bureaucrats, elected politicians and school boards, district administrators, unions, and the many university “consultants”) who seek tax-funded and private grants/financial backing, professional prestige, and the consequential power that comes with that money and those “credentials.” From those with such power to those trying to implement what they’re told to do (with really lousy curricula materials), there is little use for provable results if those results deny them their status or require them to change a dogmatic and ideological script. These people do, after all, form the critical mass that’s in charge of public education today. This includes the same persons who have led almost 50 years of America’s disastrous performance in math education and who will be given authority over any new education program, including the CCSSI. I therefore do not believe a rival group can be organized, even if there were several years given in which to do so. The will of the people is simply not there. It won’t be there until the public education system, at least in the urban areas, finally dies at the hands of the adults in charge and takes, unfortunately, another generation of young people with them. The professional negligence and ideological mess that we have allowed to develop in American education is unforgivable. Our country and her people, of all ages, are paying dearly for that.

By: Niki Hayes

Niki Hayes — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Those of us who believe in true international standards which support “traditional” algorithms and math principles that have been taught for 2000 years have continued to be out-maneuvered by the math “reformists” since the 1960′s. Debacle though their “New Math” was, with a disastrous history that has followed, the feel-good, “conceptually-based,” and egaliatarian-promoting math education establishment was given support of federal powers at that time to set up a new “American” mathematics. It was due to federal bureaucrats and politicians running in circles frantically because the Russians had beat us into space with Sputnik. We’ve never recovered from that centralized stranglehold as states have codified weak and silly standards in order to get grants and recognition from the National Science Foundation and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The name of the game is POWER and the money (especially tax dollars) that comes to those who can keep their POWER.

By: Carla A.

Carla A. — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:04:43 +0000

I have been fighting mediocre standards for years. Just this week, a district official responded to a high school math chair’s complaints about a home-grown curriculum. She was told by administration that yes, there were problems, scores were going down, but all 5 high schools needed to be using the same curriculum. Everyone’s on the sinking ship, no one can get off. Doing something for the sake of doing something, not because it’s good. Same thing here, just a bigger scale.

By: Mike Miller

Mike Miller — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:18:56 +0000

Alternative Needed to Common Core: A Consortium of states should find the backbone to align with Texas and file suit against the federal government to protect the their sovereignty and that of their citizens. States & citizens alone are Constitutionaly authorized to control the education of their children, free from coercion or bribes from the federal government. Additionally, unequal treatment of the various states is prohibited under the constitution. Absent the political will amongst the elected officials of the various states, the citizenry must step forward to demand that their state leaders protect their rights to control the direction of the education of their children.
The real danger of moving towards national standards and curriculum is not what we will be handed at the outset. In order to make the transition more palatable, we are bound to be treated to decent original documents. But down the road, when the ink is dry and the precedent set, changes in what our children are taught will be controled by special interests far removed from our individual districts. Grassroots voices will be silenced forever.