Arnie Duncan: "White women are angry, run for the hills" Common-Core education crap.

[Meresgi]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...liant/?hpid=z3

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

I havn't been following this Common Core shit too much, since I dont have kids and everyone I know is out of high school, but it seems like the same old bullshit where testing will result in funds, firings and everything else. Meanwhile the system is still shackled with step by step education, where teachers arn't allowed to deviate from anything set up for them.

[Correction]

The article doesn't do a very good job describing what the Common Core standards are or whether the problems with the new standards are their execution (e.g. no federal financial support, inadequate teacher retraining, focus isn't concentrated on poorer neighborhoods) or their grounding in reality (e.g. literature/history are whitewashed, science facts still out of date, tests don't change from 8-12 like some current state standards). The opposition also reuses the 'jerbs and taxes' opposition typically rooted in Union activism, so that's suspect to say the least. Can anybody clear this shit up, it's hard to get an honest impartial appraisal of the controversy.

[zoobernut]

He apologized for his comments. http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/politi...rsy/index.html

[archibaldcrane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_...rds_Initiative

[Drex]

lol at people going full libertarian over this, it's just more of the same shit but I'm sure the decision to draw a line in the sand this time is just a coincidence.

[Ksandra]

I hate common core only because I hate the constant state testing. With that said, while state testing exists, common core helps in letting teachers know what kids are going to get tested on. At least with English, you can basically find a way to connect any piece of literature to some common core standard (I was able to knock out a bunch of technical document categories with snippets of the Zombie Survival Guide). But you gotta try and cover all the standards by the end of the year.

[Meresgi]

The whole testing standards I feel are a root cause of how shitty education is. I havn't been in highschool/elementary for some time (I used to be a substitute), but education was shitty as fuck and these kids didn't know some of the basics. I see it a lot in college too, people who just got out of HS, and have no concept of how to write a paper or do homework on their own, etc etc.

[BaneTheBrawler]

they need to bring back home ec and shit

[Waraji]

Well, this just lends to the idea that everything is working as they have intended it to. To make people dumber. :True Story:

[GoggleHead]

Standardized testing is all kinds of bullshit in execution. My old man was in the classroom long enough to see everything come full circle many times over. Having a base line of shit kids are supposed to know is nice on paper, but the testing always results in kids just getting trained to pass tests and gets in the way of the actual learning.

[Ksandra]

I could go on and on about why the testing is bad. The biggest thing is that it's exactly what it says "standardized." Which they try to sugar coat it to say "every kid gets the same level of education." But it really means every kid who is behind has to stress out trying to learn shit they shouldn't be learning, and advance kids get the easy road.

The worst part about all this is, it isn't really testing the students, it's testing the teachers. It doesn't mean dick to the kids on how well they do, however if a teacher's class does poorly, they could get fired.

Honorable mention is they try to push this as "getting kids ready for college," when colleges don't adhere to any kind of standardized testing, and most professors are still teaching the same way they did before this testing existed, so as someone said above, it's just really royally screwing kids over.

[Drex]

I could go on and on about why the testing is bad. The biggest thing is that it's exactly what it says "standardized." Which they try to sugar coat it to say "every kid gets the same level of education." But it really means every kid who is behind has to stress out trying to learn shit they shouldn't be learning, and advance kids get the easy road.

The worst part about all this is, it isn't really testing the students, it's testing the teachers. It doesn't mean dick to the kids on how well they do, however if a teacher's class does poorly, they could get fired.

Honorable mention is they try to push this as "getting kids ready for college," when colleges don't adhere to any kind of standardized testing, and most professors are still teaching the same way they did before this testing existed, so as someone said above, it's just really royally screwing kids over.

thanks, I nearly had a stroke when I encountered this article and especially

Opposition to the standards, both their content and their implementation, has been growing in New York (and other states) among teachers, principals, superintendents and parents, some of whom have refused to allow their children to take the exams.

because it probably did not even register on her radar that she specifically excluded the group that supposedly matters most. education reform will only work if it is for the childrens' sake. this is not hard, but all of this obsession with making everything a number or grade ignores the question of whether the student is learning.

making the discussion about the standards or the grades or the parents or the admin is the absolute wrong way to handle it.

[Ksandra]

I agree. It kinda brings to one point I did forget to mention. While I think standardized testing is helping to "dumb down America" I still hate when people compare us to other countries. Other countries don't have the same tests. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, other countries do not require every student to take their test. In India, they personally select which students will take their national test. Every student in America has to take the test and they are all put in together. This means the kid in 8th grade that has downs and can still only count to 10 has to take the same 8th grade test as the straight A honor student, and our statistics don't recognize this fact. Many years ago I worked one-on-one with a fifth grade student who was shaken as a baby, so had some severe brain damage. Since he couldn't read, I had to read the test to him. And he just shouted out "A!" "B!" etc. as if it was a guessing game, without any remote clue as to what the question meant. Testing took a week. Two of my goals for him was to try to teach him how to tie his shoes and zip up his coat to help gain more independence as his grandma was his caretaker. Something way more valuable that I could have spent time on in something he would actually benefit from doing. He did learn them, but I could have been teaching something else, something more, than a guessing game.


This, again, is not to say that means we get the best, because teachers could do so much more to what students should have without them, it just makes my eye twitch when people try to use other countries' numbers as an excuse to say our teachers are bad.


You learn in education classes about a students ZPD level. And ideal learning situation is one where every student is learning something they need assistance with, but without it being too hard that it creates stress. They want and often require teachers to make sure they differentiate their lessons for every student so they hit their ZPD level. (good thing) Yet, how can a teacher do that, while at the same time needing to teach all the same content so all the students pass the same answers so that teacher doesn't get fired and gets to do the same shit next year?


Testing becomes the primary goal, and I don't blame teachers either. Who wants to lose a job they love? But ya, the children and their learning level should be, and used to be, the primary goal. And standardized testing took that away.

[Seraph]

I believe the old bitter phrase was "No child left behind means no child gets ahead". Still seems to be applicable here, for the most part.

[BaneTheBrawler]

my dad's university is based in milwaukee. for those of you not in the know, milwaukee's school system turns out some of the dumbest motherfuckers in the country. they've had to add all sorts of generals just to get these kids to a high-school level of competency. also, almost all those dumb motherfuckers are black (many are kids of immigrants). their parents are too poor to change anything even if they are aware of how shitty it is, and no one else gives a fuck because they don't have to deal with it. they just leave it for my dad's university (among others) to clean up. that's one reason tuition has been climbing. and people are trying to get affirmative action repealed. fucking bullshit. these kids need it just to get a basic high school education. and people say racism is dead.

to be fair, though, the idiot brigades are out in force. my dad works in the splinter campuses, which deal with adults already in the work force looking to go back to school. he gets students all the time who don't have a high-school level competency in anything, even though they've been professionals in highly competitive fields for many years.

[Meresgi]

trained to pass tests and gets in the way of the actual learning.

Well that's the whole point of education nowadays, and it's fucked up, but its all about making a workforce that can execute specific tasks and follow directions but can't think critically for themselves.

College is getting pretty bad, for the 2yrs anyways. We are being told we need a certain graduation % rate come 2016 or so. And that rate doesn't take into account transfers...because no one knows how shit works apparently when coming up with this bullshit. "How come your college only has a 15% graduation rate?!"....because people fucking transfer out you dipshit, if you count the transfer rate, the total is around 70%...

[Kerberoz]

Is this the shit where they're teaching elementary-schoolers 5 or 6 different ways to do simple multiplication, all of them more confusing than the normal way?

[Rooney]

No, it's something else. (that multiplication crap needs to go diaf though, seriously)

Think of it this way. You, as a teacher, have a list of ten topics you should cover this school year. Normally, you would cover each topic, as well as how they relate to and build off of each other. This promotes general comprehension, critical thinking, and actually stimulates the brain (ie, good).

Common core/core standards/whatever then comes in. You are told that your kids must now pass an end of year test to determine how you (teacher/school) are doing. Poor performance usually results in budget and staffing cuts. This test will only cover items 2, 4, 7, 9, and 10 on your list.

This pretty much forces you to focus only on those five topics instead of all ten. In turn this pushes the focus from actually learning the subjects to simply memorizing them for the test. The end result is giant deficiencies in basic skills.

[zoobernut]

How do core competencies and teaching to the test effect the idea that different people learn different ways and the need for more variety in teaching styles to accommodate that? Is that a generally accepted idea or is there still debate about the idea that different kids need to be taught different ways?

[BaneTheBrawler]

that's pretty generally accepted (every parent likes to hear that their kid is a special snowflake), however, the current thinking is that teachers are the bad guys, so all of these requirements are aimed at regulating teachers, not educating kids.