Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great post: 9:36. Right on.

Disagree. Sorry, but times have changed. If you are 60, then there were a lot more manufacturing jobs and a lot less global competition for jobs when you graduated HS. Even when I graduated in the late 80's the competition wasn't as tough. Not the case anymore. It changed in the 90's when it started becoming apparent that the US kids were not doing as well globally compared to our counterparts, and today, even compared to some lesser developed countries.

It really bugs me when I see these types of posts.. "it was good enough for me, so it should be good enough now." No, it isn't good enough now. People that have this mentality have their heads stuck in the ground and don't see how much more competitive things have become, both in the workplace and in getting into colleges.

Anonymous wrote:
I can't decide if the poster who is so pro CC is working for the Department of Education or one of the publishers. It is clear that the person is not working in a school.

Anyway, I am almost 60 years old. I remember an Iowa test once every couple of years in grade school. I do not recall any standardized tests in middle school or high school. I did well on the SAT, went to college, got a master's degree and have had a long career (30+ years). I went to public schools the whole way through. I had good teachers (many of whom I still think about) and I was very well prepared for college. For the record, I was born into a lower middle class home.

I'm not saying that everyone I went to school with is living a miracle or anything, BUT I am not sure my generation suffered from not having standardized instruction. It seems like people started complaining about the whole public system starting in the mid 90's or so. It would be interesting to understand why that happened. Was the economy changing about then? Were there more poor students coming into the schools? Did instruction change and that caused a decline in learning? Is that when they changed from a vocational to a more academic focus in schools? Maybe it's when we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and we believed that our future would be in the "smarter jobs"? I don't know. What I do know is that creating some standards and testing the heck out of them is probably not the whole answer (and probably not even half the answer).

There are school districts in this country that were doing fine before the whole standardization trend started to gain momentum. Of course there were schools that needed help too. The problem with the feds being involved in schools is that the brush gets painted too broadly and local schools that were doing well were made to suffer and pay for things they didn't need (and that didn't help). I believe this is why the Constitution left education to the states (and localities).

Now I believe that the federal government is overreaching. Not only are they overreaching, they are wasting a lot of money that could be put to use in ways that local governments know would help. If the idea is that "the locals are stupid and don't know how to educate", how in the heck are standards and tests going to make them smarter? The biggest influence is going to be the "stupid locals" on the kids, not some standards and tests. The "stupid locals" are a 24/7 thing for those kids. Of course, you might be underestimating the locals based on your own broad brush way of thinking.

Also, Pearson, McMillan, whoever . . . it doesn't matter. The point is that they have a profit motive that conflicts with a purely educational motive. Those places (and Pearson has stockholders) are going to do what is best for their bottom line and that is not necessarily what is best for students. That is happening all over unfortunately (our highway system seems to be the latest victim).

The good news is that the "stupid locals" are finally getting it and questioning these things. I don't think that's a bad thing. It's our messy democracy trying to work again. We might find a way out of this after all.

Anonymous wrote:Great post: 9:36. Right on.

Abstract:




In the fall of 2012, the United States Secretary of Education told states he would use his statutory power to waive violations of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but only on the condition that they adopt his new education policies — policies that had already failed in Congress. Most states had no real choice but to agree because eighty percent of their schools were faced with statutory sanctions and fund termination. As a result, the Secretary was effectively able to federalize two core aspects of public education over the next year. For the first time, school curriculum and the terms of teacher evaluation and retention came under the influence and control of the federal government.

This Article demonstrates that this particular exercise of conditional waiver power was both unconstitutional and beyond the scope of the Secretary’s statutory authority. First, NCLB contained no notice that states might face waiver conditions when they first agreed to participate in NCLB, much less notice of the substance of those conditions. Spending clause doctrine requires both. Second, states’ inability to say no to these conditions raises serious questions of unconstitutional coercion. Third, the Secretary lacked explicit statutory authority to impose these conditions. At best, NCLB implies authority to condition waivers, but implied conditions would be limited to the scope of NCLB itself. The waiver conditions the Secretary imposed go well beyond the scope of NCLB. Fourth, to treat these particular waiver conditions as falling within the scope of the Secretary's authority would be to extend the Secretary the equivalent of law-making power, which separation of powers doctrines prohibit. The power to unilaterally impose open-ended policy through waiver conditions would be remarkable not just for its transformation of key aspects of education, but for the entire federal administrative state. It would open the door to the spread of a more expansive administrative power than ever seen before.

Anonymous wrote:

And given that NCLB is federal law, it would be surprising (not to mention illegal) if a federal grant program disregarded a federal law.

Yes, but he seemed to have power to "waive" other parts of the law . . . like the requirement that schools improve on the testing. He traded that for systems of evaluating teachers. He seems to be pretty powerful in changing laws by his own command.

And given that NCLB is federal law, it would be surprising (not to mention illegal) if a federal grant program disregarded a federal law.

Anonymous wrote:

The testing is the part of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT that ARNE DUNCAN wants to keep. Arne Duncan is the Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is not the Common Core. The No Child Left Behind Act is also not the Common Core.

But, he wants to keep the testing requirement. It was even part of Race to the Top.

Actually, as my sixth-grader reminded me just last week after studying ancient Greece, if the public elects the decision-makers, it's not a democracy. The US is a republic.

And I assure you that the United States is not the only country in which the public elects the decision-makers.

Anonymous wrote:
I can't decide if the poster who is so pro CC is working for the Department of Education or one of the publishers. It is clear that the person is not working in a school.

The testing is the part of the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT that ARNE DUNCAN wants to keep. Arne Duncan is the Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is not the Common Core. The No Child Left Behind Act is also not the Common Core.

Anonymous wrote:

There was no reason for the Common Core creators to write in a testing requirement since it was already required by NCLB. In fact, the Obama administration, which has never been an NCLB supporter, has deftly leveraged the punitive aspects of NCLB -- like all children must be proficient by 2014 -- to force states to adopt the Common Core standards. That and the cash are the only reasons the states got on their knees and voted in Common Core Standards-- which at the time most states voted, hadn't even been written yet.

Yes. The testing is the part they want to keep.

Anonymous wrote:

There was no reason for the Common Core creators to write in a testing requirement since it was already required by NCLB. In fact, the Obama administration, which has never been an NCLB supporter, has deftly leveraged the punitive aspects of NCLB -- like all children must be proficient by 2014 -- to force states to adopt the Common Core standards. That and the cash are the only reasons the states got on their knees and voted in Common Core Standards-- which at the time most states voted, hadn't even been written yet.

There was no reason for the Common Core creators to write in a testing requirement since it was already required by NCLB. In fact, the Obama administration, which has never been an NCLB supporter, has deftly leveraged the punitive aspects of NCLB -- like all children must be proficient by 2014 -- to force states to adopt the Common Core standards. That and the cash are the only reasons the states got on their knees and voted in Common Core Standards-- which at the time most states voted, hadn't even been written yet.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It is so heartening to see the American people finally pushing back against this . . . calling out a process that affects them greatly and in which they had little input (regardless of what the pro CC people say). Many Americans were unaware of the whole CC process and are only now understanding what it is (and they don't like all of it---especially the testing---which they have plenty of experience with in the schools).

Winston Churchill said, "You can count on the Americans to do the right thing . . . after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."

We are getting there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_implementation_by_state

If this is true, then what it mainly displays is the ignorance of the American people, which I don't find particularly heartening -- given that the testing is required by the No Child Left Behind Act, a law passed by Congress in 2001; the testing would still be required even if the Common Core standards disappeared tomorrow; and the testing is still required in states that never adopted the Common Core standards,

Even if they find out their kids "aren't as brilliant as they thought they were", they will still find out that their kids' schools are at the top. It won't matter because it's all relative (you can fail less and others can fail more or you can pass more and others can pass less).

And, geez, Arne Duncan is a white suburban dad.