Reply to Have you all read this editorial about Common Core testing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Kentucky also designed its own tests, called the K-Prep.   Students did not do as well on these tests as they have done on past state tests in KY, however, it is not clear whether they performed poorly because the test was poorly designed, because the objectives were inappropriate or perhaps the passing bar was set higher than in past years.

In researching this I came across the following article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/what-kentucky-can-teach-the-rest-of-the-us-about-the-common-core/280453/

This is something that really annoys me about critics of Common Core.   Here is a common criticism -- that students are being required to read more non-fiction.

[quote]Critics have raised concerns about the content of the standards themselves, however. [b]For instance, the English standards call for more informational texts to be read and analyzed in all classes, including science and social studies[/b]. Some educators, like Sandra Stotsky, who worked on Massachusetts's acclaimed standards, worry the emphasis will decrease the amount of time studying great literature and important concepts in other subjects.

“If a science teacher is trying to teach a chemistry lab, what do you want them to do?” she said. [b]“Give them a book on Madame Curie?”[/b][/quote]

If a teacher is trying to teach a chemistry lab on, say, chemical reactions, how about having students read some relevant articles on computer modeling of chemical reactions in Scientific American Magazine?   http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=2013-chemistry-nobel-for-molecule-computer-models

Or articles in more scholarly journals?   Certainly a biography of famous people in the field would also be appropriate.   News articles about current events in the field.   lLl of these would be more than appropriate for a science class.   Many of them would help students prepare for writing research reports.
[/quote]

Academic writing is typically trash.

They'd be better off studying the classics -- which Common Core wants to strip away. [/quote]

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