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The Sunday Journal: 3/26/2023
Common Core vs. Common Sense
Common Core standards are advanced standards. I’ve written about that before. So what is the issue with it? On its face, it doesn’t seem as though there should be any. Don’t we want to provide the best opportunities for academic growth possible? Let’s look further at what Common Core means.
According to its own document, found at CoreStandards.org, these standards were developed to prepare America’s K-12 students for “college and career readiness”. That is supposed to mean that any student graduating high school should be ready to enter the work force with the requisite skills for success in our modern world. Setting aside the obvious rebuttal that this has always been the case, let’s examine their literacy overview, which is parsed as follows:
• Key ideas and details;
• Craft and structure;
• Integration of knowledge and ideas;
• Range of reading and level of text complexity.
In second grade, under the heading of key ideas, students must “ask and answer questions such as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.” They must also “retell stories, including those from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, moral, or theme”, as well as “describe how characters respond to major events and challenges.” This is second grade, and we're requiring students to understand the themes in literature.
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It’s a funny thing. Not funny in the humorous sense; funny in the “this doesn’t make any sense” sense.
Why are we testing students without holding them accountable for their results?
Our flagship book:
Chaos in Our Schools
The provocative expose of how mismanaged our education system is. Available now on Amazon.
We can fix the problem, but we need an overhaul in how we view and manage public education.
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Reading this book is a good start.
The paradigm of education has shifted over the last decade. Documentation and data collection have eclipsed teaching as the mainstay in a teacher's career.
Intro to
CHAOS IN OUR SCHOOLS
From the 2022 book Chaos in Our Schools:
The Bottom Line
There’s an insidious element in education that is unnoticed by most people. Schools are not set up for the children; they are set up for the convenience of the adults who run them. If children were the top priority in a school, they would not be assigned to static class groupings without the opportunity to advance to a different group when they are ready.
If children were the top priority, the people who work with them would be seen as more important than the bureaucrats who direct those people. Class groups would not be divided into “fair” sets of upper, middle, and low aptitudes. The behavior problems would not be dispersed throughout the school so that every other child has his education seriously diminished by the outlandishness of a few.
If children were truly the reason schools exist, the ratio of adult to child would be a reasonable and realistic one.
Our schools, particularly at the elementary level, are operated with the guiding principles that
1) Procedures and standards, copiously outlined, meet the
education needs of students,
and
2) Children should be arranged in groupings that are
acceptable to the adults in charge.
This is nonsense, but at present, there is little that can be done to thwart these ideals because the teachers’ unions won’t allow for a sensible approach to education.
Opinions on Education
Poignant
Moments
John F. Kennedy,
35th President of the United States.
Credit: Shared via Mark Cohen
on LinkedIn
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Notable Viewpoints
Why Differentiation
Doesn't Work
"Differentiation is a failure, a farce, and the ultimate educational joke played on countless educators and students. By having dismantled many of the provisions we used to offer kids on the edges of learning, ... we have sacrificed the learning of virtually every student."
- Dr. James Delisle, in Education Week
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
Albert Einstein
The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.
B.B. King
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela