Why are people so upset about Common Core?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child was learning addition, subtraction, telling time & counting money last year as a second grade student in NYS. This year my third grader's math homework started with division problems that also required comprehension to extract all of the facts to answer the questions, then they expect the child to explain the answer, in detail, on a concept they weren't taught! This has been a tough year for my child. I have been told that she hates school & the most heartbreaking part is she feels stupid. I have been working with her on my own to teach her multiplication tables, and this is after an hour of homework.

From my perspective, the curriculum bounces around too much and the teachers don't have enough time to focus on one topic before they have to move on to the next. The kids who don't learn as fast are getting steamrolled. The teachers are stressed out & are forced to worry about getting graded and potentially losing their job based on ratings. Most teachers I have spoke with said that all of the fun has been sucked out of teaching. They no longer have time to do the fun activities. Kids need to learn but they also still need to be kids. As a parent, I spend a lot of time on the 'engageny' website educating myself so I can help my child with her homework. It has been a frustrating year for the kids, the parents and the students.

I think they should have had a better implementation strategy, maybe a phased approach would have worked better. Perhaps if they started with the kindergartners and let the kids that were in the other grades continue with the old method this would have had a better outcome. So far, I am not impressed and I am upset that my child is essentially a common core guinea pig.

I agree with you here. New York State implemented some weird curriculum that tied Common Core State Standards with Core Knowledge standards. They have published the units they developed (based on CC standards as well as Core KNowledge standards) on the stae website here:

http://www.engageny.org/common-core-curriculum

In my opinion as an experienced educator, this curriculum that New York State designed is bat-shit crazy. Do realize that they are attempting to cover a LOT more than just Common Core, and the curriculum does seem overly ambitious.

When you complain to people about the curriculum your state chose to implement this year, please be accurate and do not describe it as "Common Core". It encompasses a great deal more than the Common Core State Standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Oh, that is such bullshit. In this day and age of Wikis and ubiquitous information technology there's absolutely NO REASON why teachers couldn't band together and create collaborative open source textbooks, content and curriculum, put the textbook companies out of business and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

That would put the Common Core people out of business.

Consider the politics behind Common Core, i.e. the feds have tied funding to the adoption of common core by states. Considering that was done, what is to stop the feds from financially enticing states to use the resources of the corporations in bed with them rather then open source? What the government gives, the government can take away...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child was learning addition, subtraction, telling time & counting money last year as a second grade student in NYS. This year my third grader's math homework started with division problems that also required comprehension to extract all of the facts to answer the questions, then they expect the child to explain the answer, in detail, on a concept they weren't taught! This has been a tough year for my child. I have been told that she hates school & the most heartbreaking part is she feels stupid. I have been working with her on my own to teach her multiplication tables, and this is after an hour of homework. From my perspective, the curriculum bounces around too much and the teachers don't have enough time to focus on one topic before they have to move on to the next. The kids who don't learn as fast are getting steamrolled. The teachers are stressed out & are forced to worry about getting graded and potentially losing their job based on ratings. Most teachers I have spoke with said that all of the fun has been sucked out of teaching. They no longer have time to do the fun activities. Kids need to learn but they also still need to be kids. As a parent, I spend a lot of time on the 'engageny' website educating myself so I can help my child with her homework. It has been a frustrating year for the kids, the parents and the students.

I think they should have had a better implementation strategy, maybe a phased approach would have worked better. Perhaps if they started with the kindergartners and let the kids that were in the other grades continue with the old method this would have had a better outcome. So far, I am not impressed and I am upset that my child is essentially a common core guinea pig.

Well-put and I'm so sorry your child is experiencing this. She is old enough to understand a very simple explanation about the politics behind common core so she understands that it's not her!

The devil is ALWAYS in the details, and in this case, the details are in the implementation of the standards. I read an article in the NYT that said there was also product placement in the testing, i.e. Mug root beer, Pepsi, Barbie, etc. I can see how that would make some feel there might be money flowing and that kids were being indoctrinated towards certain products. From what I understand, the teachers and administration were pretty appalled by what they saw, saying the tests were ambiguous as well, i.e. the answer was not at all clear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Most of my colleagues don't like the way it was implemented so quickly. They are writing the curriculum very quickly and not giving it to us until the last minute. We don't have time to prepare and we end up making a lot of the materials on our own. So we are working overtime times 100 and we are burnt out. I think it is a bit too ambitious myself but I teach in a Title 1 school.

I feel for you teachers, as you are the ones in the first line of fire, when you are all struggling too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Common Core is totally untested. In states that have been using it and testing with it, like New York and Kentucky, about 70 percent of kids fail the standardized tests. They simply don't understand what they've been taught. When you factor in race or any kind of disability, the failure rate skyrockets. It's very language intensive, so if your child is a slow reader or has any other kind of language based learning disability, they're just screwed.


I was talking to a mom in another state. In her daughter's 6th grade class, out of 31 students, 23 failed.

Is it possible common core is just exposing that your children are not as advanced as you assumed?

Arne Duncan, is that you?

Not the pp, but I do education research for a living. It's absolutely true. Sorry you do not wish to hear it. This is why more challenging standards are needed. (Though I don't disagree that implementation has been a real sh*tshow in many districts. That's a huge problem.)

Just by way of a history lesson, so people can understand how we got here, NCLB gave states a huge incentive to dumb down their standards. States that didn't meet self-established performance goals got dinged. So, many states just set low standards so they wouldn't face the consequences. In many cases, this resulted in a dumbing down of some education systems and curriculum. This has been going on for the better part of a decade. We're so used to it by now that we can't even seen how far behind we really are -- until you look at kids in other countries. Then you realize that we simply have to do better.

What I don't like about Common Core is that it continues to place the emphasis on schools instead of parents. Parents who don't invest in their kids, who don't read to them, who don't contribute toward their education in and outside of class, who rely on the schools to do all of the educating, are the reason kids do poorly. I realize that it's hard for parents who are working two jobs, etc., and we as a society need to do more to support that group. But, there are plenty of parents who don't work two jobs who still think the school is responsible for educating and they just follow along. There are plenty of parents who work two jobs and still insist on driving their kids to excel in school too. In my opinion, it's our parenting that needs to change if we are to move the needle on achievement. Perhaps not this extreme, but a little more Tiger momming would not kill us.

Isn't it possible, since the implementation has been a real "sh*tshow", that the kids ARE smart but those who created the tests aren't?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Just by way of a history lesson, so people can understand how we got here, NCLB gave states a huge incentive to dumb down their standards. States that didn't meet self-established performance goals got dinged. So, many states just set low standards so they wouldn't face the consequences. In many cases, this resulted in a dumbing down of some education systems and curriculum. This has been going on for the better part of a decade. We're so used to it by now that we can't even seen how far behind we really are -- until you look at kids in other countries. Then you realize that we simply have to do better.

AMEN! This is very true. I am a teacher and I can attest to the fact that the "pass" score on the state tests were in many cases set laughably low.

In addition, the accommodations allowed for students with diagnosed learning disabilities or who were English Language Learners have been too lenient. For example, if a child had difficulty learning to read and had an IEP, he could get the state tests (even in Language Arts) read aloud to him. Whole paragraphs of text read aloud, so the child could demonstrate that he was able to "get the main idea" and "make inferences." Great! ... meanwhile, the school basically just lost any incentive to actually teach the child how to read. Same problem with allowing kids with IEPs to use a calculator in the early grades. Certainly in SOME instances it is truly acceptable to allow these accommodations, but for the most part schools are desperate to have their LD kids pass these state tests, but not so desperate that they actually figure out ways to teach the kids the skills they need. THey just kept accommodating and accommodating the kids until they ended up in Middle School where even with the accommodations, the kids weren't able to pass the tests.

What I don't like about Common Core is that it continues to place the emphasis on schools instead of parents. Parents who don't invest in their kids, who don't read to them, who don't contribute toward their education in and outside of class, who rely on the schools to do all of the educating, are the reason kids do poorly. I realize that it's hard for parents who are working two jobs, etc., and we as a society need to do more to support that group. But, there are plenty of parents who don't work two jobs who still think the school is responsible for educating and they just follow along. There are plenty of parents who work two jobs and still insist on driving their kids to excel in school too. In my opinion, it's our parenting that needs to change if we are to move the needle on achievement. Perhaps not this extreme, but a little more Tiger momming would not kill us.

I disagree that Common Core state objectives should have anything to do with parents. They are just a statement of what kids should know and be able to do by the end of each grade. How schools and parents get the kids there is up to the schools and the parents. In my opinion, the state standards are basic enough that if a child is in school most of the time, and the teachers are competent, the students should be able to master the standards without extensive parental help or outside tutoring. If the child has learning disabilities they will need extra or more specific instruction to meet the standards. If the child has cognitive delays or is intellectually disabled (what used to be called mental retardation) that child will have trouble meeting the standards in my opinion.

My son is dysgraphic, profoundly so. When he was tested and the results were given, we asked the psychiatrist what we could do to help him, i.e. physical therapy, etc. The psychiatrist said that he needed to type. A computer would solve the problem, make it invisible. So we went to the public school he was at and presented the testing results. First we were told because THEIR experts didn't do the testing, they would not write an IEP. I asked them if that would hold up in court, as we used someone licensed by the state, and only after they refused to test him, saying his issue was laziness. They backed down and refused to allow him to use a computer, even after we told them we would provide it so it did not cost the county a dime. They said 'it wasn't fair to other students". So we enrolled him in private school, where all the kids use computers and never had another issue.

Your assumption that my son could have learned to physically write and think at the same time is simply medically incorrect. His IQ dropped 40 points when he tried to physically write and think at the same time because of the learning disability. Because he was smart, his IQ was still above average with the drop, hence why teachers called him lazy. They simply didn't get it. But the damage was done due to the labeling, and undone in the private, where, with his computer, he was simply one of the kids in the class, not 'the lazy kid'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Not the pp, but I do education research for a living. It's absolutely true. Sorry you do not wish to hear it. This is why more challenging standards are needed. (Though I don't disagree that implementation has been a real sh*tshow in many districts. That's a huge problem.)

Just by way of a history lesson, so people can understand how we got here, NCLB gave states a huge incentive to dumb down their standards. States that didn't meet self-established performance goals got dinged. So, many states just set low standards so they wouldn't face the consequences. In many cases, this resulted in a dumbing down of some education systems and curriculum. This has been going on for the better part of a decade. We're so used to it by now that we can't even seen how far behind we really are -- until you look at kids in other countries. Then you realize that we simply have to do better.

What I don't like about Common Core is that it continues to place the emphasis on schools instead of parents. Parents who don't invest in their kids, who don't read to them, who don't contribute toward their education in and outside of class, who rely on the schools to do all of the educating, are the reason kids do poorly. I realize that it's hard for parents who are working two jobs, etc., and we as a society need to do more to support that group. But, there are plenty of parents who don't work two jobs who still think the school is responsible for educating and they just follow along. There are plenty of parents who work two jobs and still insist on driving their kids to excel in school too. In my opinion, it's our parenting that needs to change if we are to move the needle on achievement. Perhaps not this extreme, but a little more Tiger momming would not kill us.

Holy deficit perspective, batman! Where do you work that this kind of attitude can pass in "education research"? The Heritage Foundation?

You don't agree? All the research on the achievement gap shows that it has grown or stayed stable because higher SES parents are investing so much more in their kids' education. (Achievement in other groups has also increased, btw, but the gap hasn't closed because high SES parents have upped the ante.) Kids in certain homes are also way more likely to have much bigger vocabularies, which is a huge deal for achievement. It's not true across-the-board, but Asian-American kids are (as a group) out-performing all other groups in large part because their families invest heavily in their education.

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, btw. I come from poverty and a low-education Hispanic community. The facts are the facts.

I was about to tell the PP that you were probably a liberal, because the Heritage Foundation would not subscribe to what you were saying. Thank you for confirming this for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Common Core is totally untested. In states that have been using it and testing with it, like New York and Kentucky, about 70 percent of kids fail the standardized tests. They simply don't understand what they've been taught. When you factor in race or any kind of disability, the failure rate skyrockets. It's very language intensive, so if your child is a slow reader or has any other kind of language based learning disability, they're just screwed.


I was talking to a mom in another state. In her daughter's 6th grade class, out of 31 students, 23 failed.

Is it possible common core is just exposing that your children are not as advanced as you assumed?

Arne Duncan, is that you?

Not the pp, but I do education research for a living. It's absolutely true. Sorry you do not wish to hear it. This is why more challenging standards are needed. (Though I don't disagree that implementation has been a real sh*tshow in many districts. That's a huge problem.)

Just by way of a history lesson, so people can understand how we got here, NCLB gave states a huge incentive to dumb down their standards. States that didn't meet self-established performance goals got dinged. So, many states just set low standards so they wouldn't face the consequences. In many cases, this resulted in a dumbing down of some education systems and curriculum. This has been going on for the better part of a decade. We're so used to it by now that we can't even seen how far behind we really are -- until you look at kids in other countries. Then you realize that we simply have to do better.

What I don't like about Common Core is that it continues to place the emphasis on schools instead of parents. Parents who don't invest in their kids, who don't read to them, who don't contribute toward their education in and outside of class, who rely on the schools to do all of the educating, are the reason kids do poorly. I realize that it's hard for parents who are working two jobs, etc., and we as a society need to do more to support that group. But, there are plenty of parents who don't work two jobs who still think the school is responsible for educating and they just follow along. There are plenty of parents who work two jobs and still insist on driving their kids to excel in school too. In my opinion, it's our parenting that needs to change if we are to move the needle on achievement. Perhaps not this extreme, but a little more Tiger momming would not kill us.

Isn't it possible, since the implementation has been a real "sh*tshow", that the kids ARE smart but those who created the tests aren't?

Eight year olds? "Smart"? Or not? Isn't there more to life than that?

As for public officials, that's different. I expect them to make decisions regarding the education of children in a sober, deliberate, transparent manner. I expect competence. Even the proponent of the core standards on this thread admits that the practices, assessment tools, and curricula are lacking. So many frustrated and confused children. i hope they can learn basic skills over the summer. So much public money wasted!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Once she explained to me why she bombed that part, I understood. She still got a good overall score. It was just busy work.

That's exactly the attitude that is problematic and you are just too thickheaded to see it. You've created an entitled kid who thinks she is too smart for busy work. Congratulations.

But she's doing very well in LIFE. In her JOB. So clearly the child that the pp raised is damn smart and not too entitled. And all without mind-mapping...imagine that!! Why is it so important to you to tell the PP her child is failing in life because she didn't mind map?

Be careful, your "I'm an educator" arrogance is showing...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This principal is talking about the New York state tests of New York state's curriculum. (The failings of which have been thoroughly described.) Here's a link to the comment:

http://testingtalk.org/response/disheartened-and-disgusted

Did New York state really mess up its implementation of the Common Core standards? Pretty clearly, yes.

Does this mean that, therefore, everything related to the Common Core is bad? Nope.

They cannot be separated if you want COMMON standards. So I guess the Feds will have to come in like the calvary and 'rescue' the publics, which is EXACTLY as designed. Don't kid yourself. That's why they got involved with dangling cash in the first place. It makes the states indebted to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This principal is talking about the New York state tests of New York state's curriculum. (The failings of which have been thoroughly described.) Here's a link to the comment:

http://testingtalk.org/response/disheartened-and-disgusted

Did New York state really mess up its implementation of the Common Core standards? Pretty clearly, yes.

Does this mean that, therefore, everything related to the Common Core is bad? Nope.

They cannot be separated if you want COMMON standards. So I guess the Feds will have to come in like the calvary and 'rescue' the publics, which is EXACTLY as designed. Don't kid yourself. That's why they got involved with dangling cash in the first place. It makes the states indebted to them.

Perhaps you didn't know that New York added a whole bunch of stuff to the Common Core standards? So that they are not, in fact, common standards.

Also, I'm not sure exactly what rescuing the federal government would be doing here. Perhaps you can explain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Oh, that is such bullshit. In this day and age of Wikis and ubiquitous information technology there's absolutely NO REASON why teachers couldn't band together and create collaborative open source textbooks, content and curriculum, put the textbook companies out of business and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

That would put the Common Core people out of business.

Consider the politics behind Common Core, i.e. the feds have tied funding to the adoption of common core by states. Considering that was done, what is to stop the feds from financially enticing states to use the resources of the corporations in bed with them rather then open source? What the government gives, the government can take away...

Get the government out of our public schools, is what I always say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yes, I have a kid who is being subjected to Common Core. For math, they use CPM math, a ridiculous and discredited math system that is perfectly aligned to the Common Core.

Also, if you look around nationwide, it's teachers and parents whose kids haven't bombed these tests yet. Your district can teach Common Core in a variety of ways, but the tests demand that Common Core is understood one way and one way only. Your district's curriculum will be meaningless once students face these tests.

YES!! EXACTLY!!! And that includes the SATs and ACTs which are being written to align to that one way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This principal is talking about the New York state tests of New York state's curriculum. (The failings of which have been thoroughly described.) Here's a link to the comment:

http://testingtalk.org/response/disheartened-and-disgusted

Did New York state really mess up its implementation of the Common Core standards? Pretty clearly, yes.

Does this mean that, therefore, everything related to the Common Core is bad? Nope.

They cannot be separated if you want COMMON standards. So I guess the Feds will have to come in like the calvary and 'rescue' the publics, which is EXACTLY as designed. Don't kid yourself. That's why they got involved with dangling cash in the first place. It makes the states indebted to them.

Perhaps you didn't know that New York added a whole bunch of stuff to the Common Core standards? So that they are not, in fact, common standards.

Also, I'm not sure exactly what rescuing the federal government would be doing here. Perhaps you can explain.

If the states don't get their preverbal sh*t together in regards to implementation, the feds will declare it a disaster and they will have to come to the rescue and develop the specifics of how to teach the curriculum. And that's how you control the people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Oh, that is such bullshit. In this day and age of Wikis and ubiquitous information technology there's absolutely NO REASON why teachers couldn't band together and create collaborative open source textbooks, content and curriculum, put the textbook companies out of business and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

That would put the Common Core people out of business.

Consider the politics behind Common Core, i.e. the feds have tied funding to the adoption of common core by states. Considering that was done, what is to stop the feds from financially enticing states to use the resources of the corporations in bed with them rather then open source? What the government gives, the government can take away...

Get the government out of our public schools, is what I always say.

Yeppers. For some reason, people think that the if the department of education was obliterated tomorrow, that no one would be educated in the future. This could not be farther from the truth.