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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The big fail of Common Core Standards | Seattle Education

The big fail of Common Core Standards | Seattle Education:

The big fail of Common Core Standards

common-core
In the state of Washington, the math standards have been lowered by accepting the Common Core Standards. Before the state legislature even knew what the new standards would be, the legislators in their divine knowledge, accepted Race to the Top money not knowing all of the ramifications. This happened around the country.
Peter Greene lays out the reasons for the big fail of the Common Core Standards in his post:
Support for the Core among teachers dropped like a stone, from 76% in 2013 to 46% in 2014. That’s a lot of love lost. Now, as we move from the “Holy schneikies!” phase into the “Got some splainin’ to do” phase, we’ll start to ask the big question.
Why?
Over at The Fordham, Mike Petrilli hopes he knows why– Note the phrase, “they will be used to hold public schools accountable for their performance.” Perhaps these words triggered the more negative response. I think Petrilli is hoping in vain. I think there’s a much more likely explanation for CCSS’s bad year among teachers.
Let’s think back to May of 2013. Personally, I’m a fine example of what teachers were like at that point. I didn’t know a lot about the Core, and what I did know didn’t sound all that bad. As far as I’d heard, a bunch of important people had called together a bunch of teachers to write some standards that could be used across the country to bring a little coherence to the higgledy-piggledy crazy-quilt that is US education. I’m not really a fan of national standards, but as long as they came from educational experts and were The big fail of Common Core Standards | Seattle Education:

Bill Gates funded the Seattle Times “Education Lab”
When I first found out about Seattle Times’ Education Lab I knew it would be nothing more than a mouthpiece for Bill Gates and his shills. What I didn’t know was that Mr. Bill put his bucks in to make sure Seattle Lab would happen. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised and yet his hubris […]