"13 Extreme Statements Made About The Common Core Standards"

[applegrove]

13 Extreme Statements Made About The Common Core Standards

The Huffington Post | By Rebecca Klein

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/common-core-extreme-statements_n_3908402.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

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Parents and students of America, beware. A new set of education standards is already at or coming soon to schools around the country, and it seems to have critics terrified.

These Common Core Standards have been adopted in 45 states plus the District of Columbia, and are already being taught in districts around the country. In addition to emphasizing analytical thinking and deep learning, they are designed to make sure all students across the country are held to the same criteria. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says the measure is the "single greatest thing to happen to public education in America since Brown versus Board of Education."

However, the standards seem to have elicited fear and intense rhetoric among critics, who object to the standards for several reasons, including the belief that they take power away from individual states. Some opponents even claim the standards will create an education atmosphere similar to that of Hitler’s Germany or Castro’s Cuba.

Below we have compiled a list of 13 of the most extreme statements made about the Common Core Standards. Have you heard any outrageous claims made about the standards? Let us know in the comments section.

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[applegrove]

1. An admission on the part of the right that analytical thinking and deep thoughts have a liberal

bias. LOL!

[msongs]

2. it has the same flaws as all standardized tests...

california has a lot of identified standards. questions on those many standards are put on the test based on specific standards. teachers cannot possible teach all the standards in any given subject area. if the test happens to base a question on a standard that was not covered in the classroom, it is highly likely that students will score poorly on that question. The faulty logic is that the teacher was bad or students stupid when the real reason is that people will test poorly on topics they know little or nothing about.

and on that fraud is based the entire teacher assessment movement.

[liberal_at_heart]

3. It is not being used for an altuistic reason and it is being abused.

We all want our students to learn more. But insisting that this change happen in a few short years is unrealistic and harms children and teachers. They are enacting too much change too fast and they are not funding the resources to make it happen. They are using these nearly impossible to meet goals to punish teachers and schools so they can defund them even further than they have so that the billionaires that are behind this movement can open charter schools and make millions off of our kids. I'm about ready to sue my son's school district over these Common Core Standards. I've had two different school districts try and shove this Common Core crap down my son's throat. My student is in special education. We have individual curriculums designed to help our students progress on their level and their time table. These idiot school board members decide that all students must progress at the same time and must all know the exact same things at the exact same time which is crap for any student let alone special education students. My son has suffered terribly becuase of this and I am really, really pissed of about it. I'm about ready to sue. We have to approach our children as human beings and individuals who have their own strengths, weakness, interests, and passions. We must fund our schools at the level we did before Reagon economics wrecked our economy.

[The Straight Story]

4. We don't need a federal school system

Leave it to state and local governments.

If it is the fault of teachers - why do some students do well and others do not? Standardized tests are a slap in the face of diversity and puts educational control in the hands of the few, which is where the 1% want it.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. We need federal and state funding for our schools. I don't see a need to get rid of our federal

school system. 60, 70 years ago our schools did just fine. It really wasn't until Reagan that things really started going south. We need to reverse the policies that Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama have harmed our education system.

[The Straight Story]

8. I agree with the funding side of it

But the control side is getting out of control.

It comes down to a handful in DC who think they can run a classroom better than the local teachers.

Give them the funds and let them do their job. Kids are not robots to roll off an assembly line to serve corporations.

More and more those in power expect that from us 99% and they want more and more centralized control and command.

Centralized help and funding - good.

[liberal_at_heart]

12. Believe me I know how out of control it is. They expect my special needs son to know what all the

other general education students know and perform accordingly.

[The Straight Story]

14. exactly -

Kids, all of them, learn in different ways and at different levels.

The Problem, as I have seen it, is we are so focused on teaching to the test and passing it kids are not learning and retaining because there is no time to spend with the individual student on these things (there are some helpful software packages out there, used to do customer service for McGraw-Hill on the software side for teachers).

Parents and teachers are frustrated. My daughter, who is home schooled, also has to take these tests and the school she goes through has them learning 10th grade math in 6th grade. Many kids have had a hard time grasping some of it, test scores go down, schools shut down and more money goes to newer and newer items to try and beat it into their heads.

Folks don't understand the entire learning process, 6th graders are not college students. From issues at home, to learning disabilities, etc and so on they are not on an assembly line - but are being treated as such.

[Pale Blue Dot]

5. Here's a true statement about the Common Core State Standards,

and I say this as an extreme liberal and a teacher:

They've never been scientifically tested.

Seriously. Never.

States are rushing to adopt standards without ANY scientific evidence that they work. That's the dirty little secret they don't want you to know. Imagine if we did that with drugs.

They seem reasonable, but anyone who says they know for sure they'll work is lying or spinning. Period.

[IllinoisBirdWatcher]

7. Currently we have 50 different "countries" each with their own educational system

The Common CORE Standards are just that - a basic core. Not an entire curriculum.

Before this core proposal each of the 50 states had "standards" developed by legislatures. Thus the simplistic multiple-choice rankings from "No Child Left Behind" which was a Texas gift brought to DC by then-President Shrub.

Everyone should know that one of the worst of the 50 separate educational countries is Texas, where the right-wing lay textbook committee dictates what books are available to the other 49 systems. Since Texas is the largest state-wide textbook adoption state, publishers bend to their whims. As a result such innovative concepts as removing founding father Thomas Jefferson and replacing him with Scotch creator of the Presbyterian Church John Calvin are foisted upon children in all states.

Claiming a loss of state "power" is just silly. As silly as claiming a federal minimum common core makes Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and most other industrial nations creates an atmosphere like Hitler's Germany. Each state had the choice of opting into the Common Core or not.

The two holdouts from Common Core were Texas and Alaska. Go figure. Maybe states woth only half-governors only need half-curricula.

The biggest fear of Common Core is that individual state legislatures will no longer be able to dictate isolated curricula to public schools.

The second biggest fear is that poor performing states will no longer be able to dumb-down their tests when their students do not demonstrate satisfactory performance.

Measuring performance against a common core all children should know is a good thing. Transparency (comparing all schools on a common measure) is an even better thing.

[liberal_at_heart]

10. then you sacrifice your kid on the education alter. I won't sacrifice my son.

[Pale Blue Dot]

11. Do you have children?

If so, I'd like to inject them with a new drug. I promise that it will help them learn and they'll do better on standardized tests. No, it's never been scientifically tested, but trust us - we know what we're talking about.

That's an accurate analogy for the Common Core State Standards. Standards can be a good thing, but are these the right standards, taught in the right order, and in the right way? We don't know. NO ONE KNOWS. And yet millions of dollars are being handed over to corporations who are telling us that they know they will work based on NO EVIDENCE AT ALL.

Please, I invite you to post a peer-reviewed scientific study that shows that the Common Core State Standards improve learning. I'll wait right here.

[The Straight Story]

13. It is not up to the feds to dictate standardized tests and control by funding

We have a diversity in this country and we would like to keep it that way.

If you want to have federal research into things and offer suggestions on web sites, ok.

Democrats pushed for Outcome based education in the 90's and it was a bad idea then just as it was when bush and the republicans pushed for no child left behind.

I have worked with teachers all over the US in a past job and most of them hated it. Each child is different, how they learn is different, and how they will do on testing is different.

You cannot, will not, make all the same and you never get results that are the same - which means....you will always have someone saying to spend more money to 'fix' broken things, which becomes a great way for the government to work out nice big contracts and ways to spend money on private charter schools and new programs, etc.

This is all about controlling education money, creating new problems to get rid of teachers and their unions, and letting the few pocket the money.

On the surface people might see it as a good thing, but delve into it and the history of education and you see something wholly different. My friend has a masters in education and her work has been centered around how to teach (she currently teaches teachers) and the whole standardized thing is making a mess of kids and schools because it attempts a one shoe fits all type of solution.

I will see if she can send me some of her research papers as they are quite eye opening and broad in scope (I have them on one of my HD's somewhere from 3 years ago....)

[roody]

9. Reading, writing and arithmetic

have to be new every decade or so to keep the gravy train rolling.

[AdHocSolver]

15. Teaching to a standardized test assumes a factory-assembly line model of education.

Good teaching occurs more readily in a mentor-apprentice model.

Effective learning takes place when the student is motivated to learn, and the most successful learning takes place through solving actual problems and game playing.

An example of what I mean by actual problem solving. Last autumn, I needed to replace an old garage door opener.

The problems to solve included finding out the best brand and model to buy, the best installer to hire, and to find the best price.

I used a search engine to find reviews of brands and current models. Then I made a list of companies from our local Yellow Pages.

Then I went to the Better Business Bureau website for our area and got the ratings for the companies on my list and eliminated the ones with complaints and low ratings.

Then I called the companies that survived the culling and asked for their recommendations about brands and models that they sold and costs.

The company I chose to do the job was a small family owned business that gave me useful information and also gave me the best price.

I had the motivation and a technique for researching and evaluating possible solutions. Very helpful tools were the Internet and the telephone. It was apparent that many people don't know how to do this kind of very useful research as the biggest companies that I talked to had the highest prices, and tried to steer me to higher priced models.

The best teachers that I had in school discussed issues as well as taught their students research and problem solving techniques, and were enthusiastic about the subject matter and teaching their students about their field of interest.

Teaching by rote memorization to a standardized test not only destroys the motivation of the student to learn, but it also destroys the enthusiasm of the teacher to teach.

The factory assembly line model has NO business being used in education.