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[quote=Anonymous]A previous poster gave this link:  http://www.statejournal.com/story/26393059/sandra-stotsky-common-core-gets-things-backward

[quote]Because the state standards were developed by three private Washington, D.C.-based organizations — the National Governors Association, The Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve Inc.— and all funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stotsky said she finds herself “in the position of constantly contradicting one of the major talking points,” which are that the standards are state-led.

Because they are all private organizations, there is nothing to request under the Freedom of Information Act for detail.

“There was no way anyone could ever get information from any of these organizations about why anyone was appointed to the committees, what their charge was, what they were paid,” Stotsky said. “To this day, you can't find out why people were chosen for the committees they were put on to create the standards and why the chief writers were chosen.”

The absence of high school math teachers, English professors and high school English teachers throughout the process is what prompted Stotsky to ask to be placed on the validation committee and the first thing that “hit me and woke me up — figuring out why the very people who should have been on these standards development committees weren't there,” she said.

Not only were the expected types of people absent, Stotsky said, but the fact that those within the Common Core project set up their own validation committee also left much to be desired.

“If you want something evaluated, you do not ask the people who carried it out to evaluate what they carried out themselves. That makes common sense,” she said. “You ask for an independent group to do it.”

New Approaches, Old Subjects

Once on the validation committee, Stotsky said she quickly realized “we were intended to be rubber stamps” and simply “supposed to do what they told us to do.”

When it came to the public comment draft in math, Stotsky said James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics at Stanford University and also a member of the Validation Committee, didn't understand what happened behind the scenes after seeing the final draft. Changes from the public comment draft were so drastic, Stotsky explained.

By 10th grade, many states teach the Euclidian approach to geometry, a proof-based approach to Euclidian geometry and an approach Milgram understands well.

“It's been going on for about 2,000 years so it's nothing new,” Stotsky said. “In any event, the approach that is put into Common Core is so bizarre — it was tried out in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and it was so bad they got rid of it in a few years.

“It's never been tried on a large scale anywhere else. So the question is, ‘Why is it here?'''

Another issue Stotsky pointed out about Common Core curriculum was the disappearance of the pathway to science, technology, engineering and math that was supposed to be included.

“Since we do not have access to any private records, we do not know why Common Core math standards do not allow a pathway to STEM careers,” she said. “(Or) why David Coleman, lead writer for English Language Arts, was allowed to mandate a 50/50 division between literary study and informational text at every grade level.

“Who was he, that he had this authority and power with no approval from English teachers across the country or from the parents with children in public schools?”[/quote][/quote]

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