Gee. Wonder what our stupid population has done to encourage this?

One problem I see with Zacharia's argument is that a lot of the experts that make the U.S. a great place for innovation, research, science, and technology are from foreign countries--either coming for university, grad school, post-docs, or work. So it's a mistake to fully credit our education system for these succeses.

Anonymous wrote:Enter Fareed Zakaria. He grew up in another country and he appreciates how we educate our citizens here. Despite our low test scores, we do well in the "real world". Here are a couple of his paragraphs:

In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success. Since 1964, when the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.

Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a percent of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.
But other than bad test-takers, their economies have a few important traits in common: They are flexible. Their work cultures are non-hierarchical and merit-based. All operate like "young" countries, with energy and dynamism. All three are open societies, happy to let in the world's ideas, goods and services. And people in all three nations are confident — a characteristic that can be measured. Despite ranking 27th and 30th in math, respectively, American and Israeli students came out at the top in their belief in their math abilities, if one tallies up their responses to survey questions about their skills. Sweden came in seventh, even though its math ranking was 28th.

Common Core is destroying this. It is making us less flexible and making students less confident. It's a disaster. STOP THE MADNESS NOW. I just love it that the parents can see this (at least the ones who are critical thinkers) and are opting their kids out. It seems that we have a lot of critical thinkers who care about education in the New York City area. Not too surprised there. They will lead us out of this. Thankfully.

Anonymous wrote:

Not to mention -- how much money is "buckets of money"? And why the fixation on the PARCC tests?)

Did you read the WAPO article? 2 Billion dollars. For starters.

Not to mention -- how much money is "buckets of money"? And why the fixation on the PARCC tests?)

I also don't understand how the Common Core standards are making us less flexible. Is there something particularly rigid about, for example,

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.5.1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Common Core is destroying this. It is making us less flexible and making students less confident. It's a disaster. STOP THE MADNESS NOW. I just love it that the parents can see this (at least the ones who are critical thinkers) and are opting their kids out. It seems that we have a lot of critical thinkers who care about education in the New York City area. Not too surprised there. They will lead us out of this. Thankfully.

People are opting their kids out of the Common Core curriculum? How are they doing this?

I also don't understand how the Common Core standards are making us less flexible. Is there something particularly rigid about, for example,

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.5.1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Anonymous wrote:
THIS. Thank you.

And, the fact that the Common Core / NCLB opponents keep trotting out so many confused, contorted, contrived, confabulated, and contradictory arguments demonstrates quite clearly that most of them are clearly not educators, given the blatant lack of knowledge on their part. It also goes to show that if anything, genuine concern about educational outcomes is not their real interest or concern here, if anything it's a *distant* second - that it's primarily about politics. And wow, what bizarre bedfellows - union shills and tea party nuts lying in bed together. It's like Dennis Kucinich and Sarah Palin got together and had a bizarre Frankenbaby.

Meanwhile, you also note that it's the CC/NCLB opponents who keep making these kinds of admissions and concessions, along with being the ones constantly trying to dodge and deflect, whereas the CC/NCLB supporters have not had to give one single inch of ground.

Sorry folks, but you have a real messaging problem here.

Anonymous wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/

Do you really think these companies would spend all this lobbying money if they weren't getting a pretty big return. Yes, "buckets of money" is being made. No, money is not being saved. The bigger the bureaucracy, the bigger the fraud.

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, 22:55 but you definitely don't have the critical thinkers among you.

You have people who can't tell the differences between Common Core versus curriculum, who can't tell the difference between Common Core and NCLB, who don't realize that PARCC isn't the only test out there, who don't realize that Pearson isn't the only textbook company out there, who don't realize that charters also have Common Core and NCLB testing, who lie and claim they are teachers desperate for credibility, only to then get tripped up on fundamentals that real teachers should know, who can't ever seem to come up with any actual data when challenged on their talking points, who don't understand psychometrics and cut scores, and who don't seem to realize that most of their half-baked anti-CC talking points are funded and promoted by the Koch Brothers by way of the Heartland Institute and other right wing front organizations...

From where I'm standing I'm not seeing a whole lot of critical thinking going on in your camp at all.

Anonymous wrote:

The tests are a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. This requirement existed before the Common Core standards were developed, and it exists in states that did not adopt the Common Core standards as well as in states that have disadopted the Common Core standards. If all of the states disadopted the Common Core standards tomorrow, the testing requirement would still exist. If you don't like the tests -- that is not a Common Core issue. It's a No Child Left Behind Act issue.

We ALL know that. However, the topic of this thread is PARCC. PARCC got buckets of money from the feds to develop and run tests for Common Core standards. That's the problem. And, no, it does not save money in the long run.

Anonymous wrote:

Common Core is destroying this. It is making us less flexible and making students less confident. It's a disaster. STOP THE MADNESS NOW. I just love it that the parents can see this (at least the ones who are critical thinkers) and are opting their kids out. It seems that we have a lot of critical thinkers who care about education in the New York City area. Not too surprised there. They will lead us out of this. Thankfully.

Anonymous wrote:

The tests are a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. This requirement existed before the Common Core standards were developed, and it exists in states that did not adopt the Common Core standards as well as in states that have disadopted the Common Core standards. If all of the states disadopted the Common Core standards tomorrow, the testing requirement would still exist. If you don't like the tests -- that is not a Common Core issue. It's a No Child Left Behind Act issue.

We ALL know that. However, the topic of this thread is PARCC. PARCC got buckets of money from the feds to develop and run tests for Common Core standards. That's the problem. And, no, it does not save money in the long run.