Why are people so upset about Common Core?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These tests do not appear to have been validated. Are they really testing the standard? That is the problem. And, you want to judge the teachers and students on the results of poorly written tests. That is a bigger problem.

Which tests are you talking about?

The PARCC tests are in their first year of widespread field testing. The biggest complaints seem to be that they are on a computer and many kids aren't prepared for computer assessments-- a very valid criticism. Also there have been computer crashes and so forth -- another valid criticism.

Yeah a lot of school use technology as a toy where they get to play math or reading games. At my last school the kids had no instruction on how to type or how to open up a word document and copy and paste words into it. Unless something changes they are going to be screwed when it is time to do the parcc

[Anonymous]

^ The reason (some) people are up in arms is because the right wing has randomly, arbitrarily and capriciously taken it up as the latest whipping boy, presuming to paint "Arnie" and by extension Obama with some notion of horrific disaster just because it's a change "on his watch" - yet the reality of it is that this was not a FEDERAL initiative. It was a STATE initiative. The feds made some money available to support schools while they tried to switch, but beyond that it was never the feds dictating content, orchestrating some grand design or anything else. But that's what deranged, paranoid conservatives do these days - they see black helicopters and death panels lurking behind every corner. Nice try, but no cigar - and the sane and rational among us are just rolling our eyes at your hysteria.

Actually, I think the reverse is true. The big government supporters are all for Common Core because the administration tells them so. You need to get in the weeds of this program and see what problems it brings. Again, follow the money.

[Anonymous]

As a young teacher, I witnessed the lobbying of textbook selection committee members by publishing companies. They essential lobby teachers and board members with gifts, etc. Follow the money.

[Anonymous]

cont. The publishing companies are developing the tests and materials. They are the winners in the Common Core--not the kids. I think the leaders (Duncan,etc.) mean well, but they are naïve.

[Anonymous]

PARCC and Smarter Balanced are a train wreck: Crashing systems, too-long tests, reading levels grades above where the kids are at, questions on things they've never been taught.


South Carolina actually bailed on Smarter Balanced midstream it was so horrible!

ANd here's a newly minted PARCC hater from Ohio:

http://testingtalk.org/response/observations-from-parcc-assessment
Observations from PARCC Assessment

Author: Anonymous, Teacher
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State: OH
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Test: PARCC - pilot
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Date: April 4 at 12:47 pm ET

My students took the Math 1 Field Test for PARCC over the last two days. They were incredibly frustrated. Although they got logged on okay (except for 4 and that was never resolved), they found the interface to be slow. Several students’ computers got locked up and we had to log them out and re-log them in. My students had not seen or used a TI-84 graphing calculator before and they were frustrated because of that. And as far as the content… well, let’s just say that they had not seen very much of that before. I knew that going in. Even stuff they had seen before, they had difficulty with due to how the questions were worded. They didn’t understand what information was provided or what they question was.

Our field test was 24 questions over 3 sections. In the PBA blueprint, it said it would be 18 questions. The Model Content Frameworks that were provided by PARCC marked items as “major content,” “supporting content,” or “additional content.” I am fairly certain that all content that was listed was on the test in one form or another. Some topics that were listed as supporting content made an appearance several times – to the point that I thought it was major content.

Needless to say, it has been an incredibly frustrating and depressing couple of days.

[Anonymous]

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/reply/150/370457.page

ANd here's a teacher reporting on how inappropriate Smarter Balanced is:

Pilot tests were not appropriate for students’ age levels

Author: Susan Hersh, media specialist
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State: WI
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Test: Smarter Balanced - pilot
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Date: April 3 at 5:53 pm ET

After administering the language arts and math pilot tests for smarter balanced, teachers gave me their feedback. The tests were extremely time consuming; some students were sitting for over two hours. The structure and content of the test were not age appropriate. Teachers found the level of student frustration to be very high–students were actually angry and acting out during the testing sessions. Students were giving up on questions based on the lengthy reading passages presented–even strong readers. One teacher described the testing sessions as ‘child abuse.’

[Anonymous]

My child is a 3rd grader who took the PARCC reading test as part of the pilot. She did not think it was impossibly hard. She said each part took a little over an hour and there was a lot of typing. However, she said what the test was asking for was similar to the writing that they had been working on for the past two years in reading -- citing specific examples to support a position from more than one text. I think the its too hard hype may be overblown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have no idea. Other than the usual criticisms about standardization. But I have no objection to teaching to the test or requiring that students have some shared baseline knowledge. So I've never really bought those critiques.

Why bother to post if you have no useful information to convey? You are saying basically "who cares? I don't." Well the OP cares, otherwise she wouldn't have posted.

You might as well have posted your to-do list for this morning. It would be just as useful and relevant to the OPs question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child is a 3rd grader who took the PARCC reading test as part of the pilot. She did not think it was impossibly hard. She said each part took a little over an hour and there was a lot of typing. However, she said what the test was asking for was similar to the writing that they had been working on for the past two years in reading -- citing specific examples to support a position from more than one text. I think the its too hard hype may be overblown.

If your child is a strong student, it would make sense that she would do well. About 30 percent of the student body will pass.


70 percent of the white student body will fail this test, and up to 95 percent of black, Hispanic and special needs students will fail.

[Anonymous]

She did not think it was impossibly hard.

Hard is okay. Poorly designed is not. Also, asking stupid, common sense questions about "how you know that one-third plus 0ne-third equals two thirds is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ The reason (some) people are up in arms is because the right wing has randomly, arbitrarily and capriciously taken it up as the latest whipping boy, presuming to paint "Arnie" and by extension Obama with some notion of horrific disaster just because it's a change "on his watch" - yet the reality of it is that this was not a FEDERAL initiative. It was a STATE initiative. The feds made some money available to support schools while they tried to switch, but beyond that it was never the feds dictating content, orchestrating some grand design or anything else. But that's what deranged, paranoid conservatives do these days - they see black helicopters and death panels lurking behind every corner. Nice try, but no cigar - and the sane and rational among us are just rolling our eyes at your hysteria.

I didn't read the whole thread, but I want to note that I am not thrilled with Common Core, and I am not a right-wing crazy looking to bash Obama.

I don't like standardized education, but I do think Common Core will help the kids on the bottom. For the smarter kids, it holds them back, as do all the standardized curriculums I have encountered.

My child is very unhappy with Common Core because of the emphasis on writing. Our school implemented it in 4th grade, and my son had not done much writing before then (bad school!), so the huge writing requirements of CC have been daunting to him.

They probably should have rolled it out, starting with K, but that's not how schools do things! Not our school.

Long term, it won't matter for my kid, since he's smart and will figure it out. I think CC is better than what preceded it, but as always with any one-size-fits-all education there are problems. If only we could go back to the age of 1:1 tutoring! Education tailored to the needs of the individual child!

[Anonymous]

Education tailored to the needs of the individual child!

Homeschool? I'm a conservative who taught for years. I would never have homeschooled! However, it is one on one. But, I think the kids miss a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ The reason (some) people are up in arms is because the right wing has randomly, arbitrarily and capriciously taken it up as the latest whipping boy, presuming to paint "Arnie" and by extension Obama with some notion of horrific disaster just because it's a change "on his watch" - yet the reality of it is that this was not a FEDERAL initiative. It was a STATE initiative. The feds made some money available to support schools while they tried to switch, but beyond that it was never the feds dictating content, orchestrating some grand design or anything else. But that's what deranged, paranoid conservatives do these days - they see black helicopters and death panels lurking behind every corner. Nice try, but no cigar - and the sane and rational among us are just rolling our eyes at your hysteria.

I didn't read the whole thread, but I want to note that I am not thrilled with Common Core, and I am not a right-wing crazy looking to bash Obama.

I don't like standardized education, but I do think Common Core will help the kids on the bottom. For the smarter kids, it holds them back, as do all the standardized curriculums I have encountered.

My child is very unhappy with Common Core because of the emphasis on writing. Our school implemented it in 4th grade, and my son had not done much writing before then (bad school!), so the huge writing requirements of CC have been daunting to him.

They probably should have rolled it out, starting with K, but that's not how schools do things! Not our school.

Long term, it won't matter for my kid, since he's smart and will figure it out. I think CC is better than what preceded it, but as always with any one-size-fits-all education there are problems. If only we could go back to the age of 1:1 tutoring! Education tailored to the needs of the individual child!

Again, I don't see how it will hold kids back. It's a minimum standard, schools are perfectly free to go above and beyond Common Core. If they aren't doing that or educators are somehow feeling constrained, that's a problem with the school, not Common Core.

[Anonymous]

Again, I don't see how it will hold kids back. It's a minimum standard, schools are perfectly free to go above and beyond Common Core. If they aren't doing that or educators are somehow feeling constrained, that's a problem with the school, not Common Core.

When the standards are not "testable" and tests are part of the plan, it is not a minimum standard--it is a ridiculous system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Again, I don't see how it will hold kids back. It's a minimum standard, schools are perfectly free to go above and beyond Common Core. If they aren't doing that or educators are somehow feeling constrained, that's a problem with the school, not Common Core.

When the standards are not "testable" and tests are part of the plan, it is not a minimum standard--it is a ridiculous system.

Cherry pick one thing, present it in such a way that it appears ridiculous, and then paint all the rest with "it's untestable and ridiculous".

Where to even start on where you folks go wrong...?

ALL of these apply, for starters...
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity