PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them

[Anonymous]

^ and even if 2 or 3 standards were "vague" what makes you think it makes more sense to scrap the entire body of work as opposed to simply updating the 2 or 3 vague ones?

And if you are concerned about the costs of all of this, then you need to consider that if all of the Common Core standards are scrapped, then you would be starting over, with a whole new set of costs for implementing replacement standards - and based on previous experience, there is far less economy of scale and far greater overall cost in doing things individually, state by state and district by district.

Your solution of just scrapping everything sure doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Certainly doesn't make financial sense.

[Anonymous]

How much are you being paid to oppose PARCC and NCLB? The same kind of paranoid delusional thinking that it had to be all about money as a motivator could be applied to you as well...

And, it *IS* a fact that the Koch brothers are pumping millions of dollars into the campaign to oppose Common Core and NCLB, so maybe you're one of them

My pay for opposing CC . . . ZERO.

[Anonymous]

and even if 2 or 3 standards were "vague" what makes you think it makes more sense to scrap the entire body of work as opposed to simply updating the 2 or 3 vague ones?

And if you are concerned about the costs of all of this, then you need to consider that if all of the Common Core standards are scrapped, then you would be starting over, with a whole new set of costs for implementing replacement standards - and based on previous experience, there is far less economy of scale and far greater overall cost in doing things individually, state by state and district by district.

Your solution of just scrapping everything sure doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Certainly doesn't make financial sense.

The cost of keeping something that does no good or worse in place is much, much more. Despite your fear of the Koch brothers, money is not everything.

[Anonymous]

While watching the Ken Burns "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies" last night, I couldn't help but think of this whole NCLB and CC process. The show is great, not just because it documents a horrible malady, but because it shows how scientific investigation works or doesn't work and what some of the pitfalls are. The same pitfalls are happening with CC (IMO). In the show, they raced ahead with radical mastectomies and later with extreme chemotherapy only to find that those things had horrible side effects and no real increased effectiveness. The public was clamoring for "the cure" for cancer, but the reality is that there are many different "cancers" and that there are probably an incredible number of triggers, causes, etc.

We are treating our children and their learning in the same way that the early cancer researchers thought about cancer. We are missing way, way more than we are learning when we use these "tests". We have to think way outside the box about learning and children. The "tests" are clearly not improving our children's learning. Like the radical mastectomies and overzealous chemotherapy, we need to stop and take more measured approaches based on what we are seeing in our students. The whole idea of collaboration between researchers and doctors is so well presented in the film. With CC, the practitioners have been left out. There can be no real progress without including the practitioners. That has been made clear in the Ken Burns show and it is no different in education. Mistakes are made when either side of the equation is left out.

I just don't understand why this was not obvious to the people who designed the standards.

I also am dismayed that so many states adopted something like this before it was given "clinical trial" time. Why wasn't it tried out somewhere and the results made public before the big roll out to so many? The results of this failure are being seen now.

[Anonymous]

Isn't there sort of a conflict of interest in Duncan giving a waiver to Virginia when he lives there and his kids go to public school there? But, hey, it's good that VA is not a CC state and that they are safe from the "teacher evaluation" requirement for at least the next four years. I'm sure other states will be exempted from that as well. It sounds like he is really backing off. Message received!!! Thank you anti CC'ers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virginia-four-other-states-to-remain-exempt-from-no-child-left-behind/2015/03/31/6ed61d48-d710-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html

[Anonymous]

In four years Duncan will be in his new job and he doesn't need any big fights before he leaves and gets that job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
While watching the Ken Burns "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies" last night, I couldn't help but think of this whole NCLB and CC process. The show is great, not just because it documents a horrible malady, but because it shows how scientific investigation works or doesn't work and what some of the pitfalls are. The same pitfalls are happening with CC (IMO). In the show, they raced ahead with radical mastectomies and later with extreme chemotherapy only to find that those things had horrible side effects and no real increased effectiveness. The public was clamoring for "the cure" for cancer, but the reality is that there are many different "cancers" and that there are probably an incredible number of triggers, causes, etc.

We are treating our children and their learning in the same way that the early cancer researchers thought about cancer. We are missing way, way more than we are learning when we use these "tests". We have to think way outside the box about learning and children. The "tests" are clearly not improving our children's learning. Like the radical mastectomies and overzealous chemotherapy, we need to stop and take more measured approaches based on what we are seeing in our students. The whole idea of collaboration between researchers and doctors is so well presented in the film. With CC, the practitioners have been left out. There can be no real progress without including the practitioners. That has been made clear in the Ken Burns show and it is no different in education. Mistakes are made when either side of the equation is left out.

I just don't understand why this was not obvious to the people who designed the standards.

I also am dismayed that so many states adopted something like this before it was given "clinical trial" time. Why wasn't it tried out somewhere and the results made public before the big roll out to so many? The results of this failure are being seen now.

Such a smart response. And you are so right, IMO. There's huge rush for these radical standards and jacked up testing with NO PROOF that it will do anything.

The educational motto should also be "Do No Harm."

[Anonymous]

Such a smart response. And you are so right, IMO. There's huge rush for these radical standards and jacked up testing with NO PROOF that it will do anything.

The educational motto should also be "Do No Harm."

Thanks! I think you are smart too! I'm a teacher. Thank God we have each other out in the trenches. The teachers and the students are what keep me going when I feel like the rest of the world is getting crazy. My motto is "we can do this"!!

Something else that impressed me about the Ken Burns show last night was the woman named Mary Lasker (who was tireless in her support for cancer research). She came from the same small town in Wisconsin where my father lives (and I grew up near there). That was the first time I heard of her and I am just so, so proud of her and where I come from. My mother taught me to "fight the good fight" (as her father had taught her) and that is a legacy far more important than money. I just hope I can teach my students what is truly important in life . . . and these tests are not helping me to put the focus where it should be. We are going to win this battle one way or another because we are fighting the good fight. Good luck to you as we finish this school year.

[Anonymous]

I also am dismayed that so many states adopted something like this before it was given "clinical trial" time. Why wasn't it tried out somewhere and the results made public before the big roll out to so many? The results of this failure are being seen now.

The whole idea of "Race to the Top" was so incredibly wrong. Why would we "race" when we can go more slowly and try to gain some real understanding and try to get things right? The idea that we don't have time is what is screwing up our classrooms. We just keep packing more into these kids lives, creating more anxiety, and we don't take time to figure out what we are doing or why we are doing it or whether it is making the kids better people. No wonder we've got all kinds of mental problems with kids. We are literally driving ourselves crazy with all this stuff.

We have record percentages of kids taking meds for all kinds of stuff.

[Anonymous]

You present 2 or 3 items, and then come up with the most obtuse and pedantic interpretation of them possible to try and show them as "vague" and then, based on that, you go on to characterize the entire body of standards as "vague" - evidently, wherever you went to school, they never taught you about invalid analyses like what the limits of extrapolation are and how
You present 2 or 3 items, and then come up with the most obtuse and pedantic interpretation of them possible to try and show them as "vague" and then, based on that, you go on to characterize the entire body of standards as "vague" - evidently, wherever you went to school, they never taught you about invalid analyses like what the limits of extrapolation are and how cherry picking of data is invalid.




.

Do you understand the difference between "cherry picking of data" and documenting specific examples?

Please explain how those sorry standards made it through the vetting process.

[Anonymous]

I'd love to se the data the committees used in the development of Common Core. I suspect there is none.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You present 2 or 3 items, and then come up with the most obtuse and pedantic interpretation of them possible to try and show them as "vague" and then, based on that, you go on to characterize the entire body of standards as "vague" - evidently, wherever you went to school, they never taught you about invalid analyses like what the limits of extrapolation are and how
You present 2 or 3 items, and then come up with the most obtuse and pedantic interpretation of them possible to try and show them as "vague" and then, based on that, you go on to characterize the entire body of standards as "vague" - evidently, wherever you went to school, they never taught you about invalid analyses like what the limits of extrapolation are and how cherry picking of data is invalid.




.

Do you understand the difference between "cherry picking of data" and documenting specific examples?

Please explain how those sorry standards made it through the vetting process.

Do you understand that your 2 or 3 examples does not necessarily constitute an accurate or valid characterization of the whole?

[Anonymous]

Do you understand that your 2 or 3 examples does not necessarily constitute an accurate or valid characterization of the whole?

But you keep asking for examples. Then when they are listed and you don't like them, you change your tune to "they aren't a valid characterization of the whole".

The "whole" is the sum of the parts and the parts are lacking. You do look like an apologist for these standards. Open your eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

and even if 2 or 3 standards were "vague" what makes you think it makes more sense to scrap the entire body of work as opposed to simply updating the 2 or 3 vague ones?

And if you are concerned about the costs of all of this, then you need to consider that if all of the Common Core standards are scrapped, then you would be starting over, with a whole new set of costs for implementing replacement standards - and based on previous experience, there is far less economy of scale and far greater overall cost in doing things individually, state by state and district by district.

Your solution of just scrapping everything sure doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Certainly doesn't make financial sense.

The cost of keeping something that does no good or worse in place is much, much more. Despite your fear of the Koch brothers, money is not everything.

"Does no good or worse" is strictly an opinion shared by you and some hired shills. And further, any "cost" you might want to cite is purely speculative.

However given existing historical data relating to the cost of developing standards, it's already known and documented fact that the costs of each state and district doing their own thing is vastly more expensive than the cost of developing and maintaining one standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do you understand that your 2 or 3 examples does not necessarily constitute an accurate or valid characterization of the whole?

But you keep asking for examples. Then when they are listed and you don't like them, you change your tune to "they aren't a valid characterization of the whole".

The "whole" is the sum of the parts and the parts are lacking. You do look like an apologist for these standards. Open your eyes.

Do you throw a car away when you find a minor cosmetic scuff on a tire, a tiny ding in a rocker panel from a rock that was kicked up, and a little bit of grease near the dipstick for checking oil?

Apparently YOU do.

This is a 100% accurate characterization of your approach.

And no, we are NOT talking major mechanical defects that affect safety or operation. NOTHING you have presented even REMOTELY rises to being significant. All you've ever presented is a tiny handful of minimal issues like typos and things that might be construed as vague only when interpreted in the most pedantic and obtuse way possible, things that are thoroughly de-minimus defects which in no way have any adverse impact on learning or overall goals, objectives or achievement.