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Common Core

simosfrostyone said:
Some but--once again--conservatives are not monolithic, as you seem to think.
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No group is monolithic. I'm talking about the conservative elected officials who are elected by the majority of conservative citizens. Sure some individuals may not like NCLB or similar state initiatives but those bills by and large have broad conservative support.

What's so funny about 89's OT is that the video directly matches liberal problems with conservative education policy. Liberals prefer education resources and funding are directed toward teachers, the people who work directly with the kids and care about the kids. Conservatives direct education resources toward publishers, online education companies, charter school companies, and consultants whose jobs are to tell the teachers how to teach. Of course, those companies aren't in it for the kids. They're in it for a large slice of state education funding.
 
PhDeac said:
Haha. Obama supports Common Core and all of a sudden conservatives turn against education trends they've been supporting for years.
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lol PH is there anything about Obama you disagree with?
 
Deacs89 said:
But you think any conservative push back on common core is bias and driven by politics.
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Because conservatives were for Common Core before they were against it. That opposition on came when Obama was attached to it. Conservatives aren't opposed to private companies profiting off education unless they believe it makes Obama look bad.
 
Yeah I tend to agree with that. I'm no Common Core fan either, but admittedly as someone who doesn't have kids and isn't big on education policy, I hadn't heard a lot about it until I saw fear-mongering posts on Facebook about it. I looked into it to see what the federal impetus was and if it was Obama's thing (kinda figured it was since it was getting pushback from my very conservative friends) and then found out that it wasn't even controversial when it was rolled out with a pretty high level of bipartisan support.
 
Yeah. Common Core is a state-led initiative that was adopted by 45 states. Obama started coming out publicly for it and all of sudden conservatives started demonizing it and as the video shows demonizing things they had been in favor of like involvement of private companies.
 
It's called contrarian politics. Conservatives hate anything associated with Obama.
 
PhDeac said:
It's called contrarian politics. Conservatives hate anything associated with Obama.
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This is simply not true at all. I like beer. A lot.

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As a parent of two elementary school aged kids, a scientist who uses a lot of math and statistics in my job, a dyslexic who struggled mightily to learn basic arithmetic in 1st through 6th grade, I think the common core is a fan-fucking-tactic way to teach mathematics to kids. The problem with common core is political grand standing and the occasional inept application of the method by a few teachers here and there, which is posted on the internet, goes viral and then a lot of people who don't understand complain that they don't understand. My third grader is learning the basics of matrix algebra for Christ's sake...I didn't even know what a matrix was till high school and I didn't understand them till grad school.
 
Yeah. The purely instructional part of Common Core is promising, but it should be one option that teachers should choose to use if they believe it's the best way to reach their students. Micromanaging what should be the decisions of learned professionals doesn't help our students. It just adds yet another layer of bureaucracy between the relationship between teacher and student.
 
I can't whole heartedly agree with you, though I like the principle of reducing the micromanaging teachers and the bureaucracy of schools etc. there should be some level of choice available for the students and the parents as well, to be able to choose what mode of teaching they want to get/their kid to receive. I, in principle, agree with allowing teachers to retain control of their own classrooms, but if my child ends of in a class room that is memorizing multiplication tables rather than learning about the principles of multiplication and building the tools to do any multiplication problem she faces next year, and there is nothing I can do about it, I will be pissed.
 
PhDeac said:
Yeah. The purely instructional part of Common Core is promising, but it should be one option that teachers should choose to use if they believe it's the best way to reach their students. Micromanaging what should be the decisions of learned professionals doesn't help our students. It just adds yet another layer of bureaucracy between the relationship between teacher and student.
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I thought part of the point was that what someone learned in a 3rd grade class in Baltimore is the same that another 3rd grade class learns in Texas? If teachers can decide the best way to reach their students that defeats the purpose.
 
bernbp5 said:
I thought part of the point was that what someone learned in a 3rd grade class in Baltimore is the same that another 3rd grade class learns in Texas? If teachers can decide the best way to reach their students that defeats the purpose.
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You can teach the same things without teaching them the same way.
 
I think common core is designed to be fairly flexible and allow teachers to choose methods.

From my perspective as the parent of a second grader, common core is the least of the problems. The single biggest problem is the damn testing, and retesting, and assessing, and reassessing, and practice testing - on and on. My kid's teachers, since Kindergarten, have been required to devote huge amounts of their time to assessing and testing the kids. In K-1, there were teacher assistants to try and keep some learning going on while the teacher was doing all the individual assessments. Now in 2d grade, there is one assistant for 4 teachers. So while the teacher is in the back of the room doing the mandatory assessing, she has to assign busy work to all the other kids to keep them busy, or rely on a parent volunteer to read to them or something. Needless to say, there is very little time for individualized instruction.

We are told that all this reaches a peak in 3rd grade, when they have to take the EOGs for the first time, and the entire year is geared to test prep. Several parents have told us that 3rd grade basically crushed their child's love of learning and interest in school. We are fortunate to be able to afford private school and we are trying to decide the best course here.
 
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