Commonwealth Education Organization
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- Common Core Standards
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Dr. Bill Evers of the Hoover Institution discusses how the education is turning into a federal power grab that has profound effects for America's children. While most advanced countries expect their children to learn algebra in the 8th grade, the federal government is setting a 9th grade standard. Is the new math worse than the old math? Is the Obama Administration deliberating setting lower standards for your children? Find out as Alexis Garcia brings you the latest from the front lines of US education policy. >>link to video>> |
| *March 26, 2013 BILL GATES' $100 MILLION DATABASE TO TRACK STUDENTS "He notes the hypocrisy of many globalist billionaires (such as Gates, whose 11-, 14- and 17-year-old children enjoy the extra security of private schools and for their own protection, have had to wait until the age of 13 to get a cell phone). 'This is just one more example of the elite internationalist double standard,' contends Farris, who also is the founder and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). 'They are perfectly content to share your child’s personal information, while keeping their own children in private schools or under private tutors.'" >>read more>> |
| *March 25, 2013 WHY COMMON CORE DOESN'T MATTER AND WHY IT DOES "The success of Common Core depends on building a centralized machine of assessment and consequences linked to the national standards. There is no significant political constituency supporting this effort to make sure it is adopted and sustained over time. Teachers and their unions hate it. Advantaged parents (the ones with political power) also hate it as they see the the schools and teachers they love lose their autonomy and become cogs in a centralized machine unresponsive to the particular needs and interests of those advantaged parents. Other than the PLDD crowd in their alphabet soup of reform organizations, who will advocate for and sustain meaningful performance pay for teachers where performance is defined as compliance with centralized mandates? No one. And that’s why Common Core will be a political loser." >>read more>> |
| *March 25, 2013 THE AMBITIONS OF BILL & MELINDA GATES: CONTROLLING POPULATION & PUBLIC EDUCATION "Continuing their commitment to controlling global population growth through artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortion initiatives, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, a self-described “practicing” Catholic, are now attempting to control the curriculum of the nation’s public schools. Subsidizing the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $76 million to support teachers in implementing the Common Core—a standardized national curriculum." >>read more>> |
| *March 23, 2013 COMMON CORE CURRICULUM: A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN of HIDDEN LANGUAGE "The Common Core website uses Orwellian language to deny that the curriculum tells teachers what to teach. The site claims that is a myth: 'These standards will establish what students need to learn, but they will not dictate how teachers should teach.' This is like saying, teachers will be required to teach sex education and evolution, but they can choose whether to teach it using assignments, movies, class discussion or reading. The bloated program is underfunded. Local school administrators have already started complaining that the grants aren’t enough to cover the requirements behind them. 'We were spending a disproportionate amount of time following all the requirements,' said Mike Johnson, the superintendent of Bexley schools in Ohio, which turned down the last half of a $100,000, four-year grant this school year. “It was costing us far more than that to implement all of the mandates.” >>read more>> |
| *March 23, 2013 WE STILL HAVE CHOICE, SORT OF. MYTH VS. FACT "Each state can choose to add 15% to what is taught in classrooms, but that 15% won’t be on any of the national tests, so what teacher is going to teach it when their job is on the line to crank out top test scores for merit pay? None of them. Utah will only teach what’s in the standards." >>read more>> |
| *March 21, 2013 EDUCATION DEPARTMENT HELPS LEAK STUDENTS' PERSONAL DATA "States and schools are signing over private data from millions of students to companies and researchers who hope to glean secrets of the human mind." >>read more>> |
| *March 20, 2013 NATIONAL DATABASE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN LAUNCHED "The project is called inBloom-a massive national database of personal information on public school students- and it is already up and running. Largely funded by the pro-internationalist Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the $100 million project contains information on millions of children to date. So far, at least 9 states are using or planning to use the system: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina." >>read more>> |
| *March 19, 2013 COMMON CORE: A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL & PARENTS PERSPECTIVE "According to the U.S. Department of Education, CCSS will authorize the use of testing instruments that will measure the “attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitude’s and intra personal resources” of public school students under CCSS (USDOE Feb, 2013 Report). In a nutshell, CCSS simply states that it will develop highly effective assessments that measures….well….almost 'everything.' A careful, or even a casual review of a 'comprehensive evaluation' would clearly show that the level of information provided about a particular child is both highly sensitive and extremely personal in nature." >>read more>> |
| *March 18, 2013 COMMON CORE TESTS TO TAKE UP TO 10 HOURS "The guidance answers one of the big questions that had been hanging over the tests: Given their promises to measure students’ skills in a deeper, more nuanced way, partly through the use of extended performance tasks, just how long will the tests take?" >>read more>> |
| *March 18, 2013 COMMON CORE: WHAT'S HIDDEN BEHIND THE LANGUAGE "The bloated program is underfunded. Local school administrators have already started complaining that the grants aren't enough to cover the requirements behind them. 'We were spending a disproportionate amount of time following all the requirements,' said Mike Johnson, the superintendent of Bexley schools in Ohio, which turned down the last half of a $100,000, four-year grant this school year. 'It was costing us far more than that to implement all of the mandates.' " >>read more>> |
| *March 8, 2013 ROTTEN TO THE CORE: THE FEDS' INVASIVE STUDENT TRACKING "Say goodbye to your children's privacy. Say hello to an unprecedented nationwide student tracking system, whose data will apparently be sold by government officials to the highest bidders. It's yet another encroachment of centralized education bureaucrats on local control and parental rights under the banner of "Common Core." >>read more>> |
| January 25, 2013 ROTTEN TO THE CORE (Part 2): READIN', WRITIN' & DECONSTRUCTIONISM "Bipartisan Common Core defenders claim their standards are merely "recommendations." But the standards, "rubrics" and "exemplars" are tied to tests and textbooks. The textbooks and tests are tied to money and power. Federally funded and federally championed nationalized standards lead inexorably to de facto mandates. Any way you slice it, dice it or word-cloud it, Common Core is a mandate for mediocrity." >>read more>> |
| January 24, 2012 DEBUNKING MISCONCEPTIONS: "THE COMMON CORE IS STATE-LED" "Under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, education is among the most important policy power not “delegated to the United States” and therefore is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Historically, U.S. Education policy-making has been a matter of local control, where parents have the most influence. That was not honored in this process." >>read more>> January 23, 2013 ROTTEN TO THE CORE (Part 1) "Common Core is rotten to the core. The corruption of math education is just the beginning." >>read more>> January 22, 2013 COMMON CORE--AN INITIATIVE GONE WRONG? "I hope that as teachers we will work hard enough and look at the curriculum gaps that may occur because of the implementation of the CCS. The CCS are beneficial to our students in many ways that I will touch in my future articles, but without the knowledge of the CCS and current state standards, gaps that may exist, and future implication, I fear that many students may feel the brunt of the change in a negative way." >>read more>> January 21, 2013 8th GRADE HISTORY TEACHER: STOP THE COMMON CORE "My research of Common Core Standards kept me awake at night, because what I discovered was so shocking. I discovered that Common Core Standards is about so much more than educational standards. I wanted so badly to believe these changes would be good for our children. How can “common” standards be a bad thing? After all, isn’t it nice to have students learning the same exceptional standards from Alabama to Alaska, from Minnesota to Massachusetts?" >>read more>> January 15, 2013 SENATOR SCOTT SCHNEIDER REINTRODUCES BILL TO WITHDRAW INDIANA FROM COMMON CORE STANDARDS "Schneider and Tuttle (a parent) argue that the Common Core nationalizes education and “dumbs down” Indiana’s old standards." >>read more>> January 15, 2013 WHO'S WRITING COMMON CORE SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS? "Isn’t it great that we have an “open government” that, often at great costs, supports, buys into, and voluntarily adopts frameworks and standards developed by non-government organizations behind closed doors without the opportunity for real public input and involvement?" >>read more>> January 15, 2013 CHILDREN FOR SALE "No more decisions behind closed doors! Let’s get everyone talking about Common Core." >>read more>> January 13, 2013 A MATH TEACHER ON COMMON CORE STANDARDS "I don’t think the common core math standards are good for most kids, not just the Title I students. While they are certainly more focused than the previous NCTM-inspired state standards, which were a horrifying hodge-podge of material, they still basically put the intellectual cart before the horse. They pay lip service to actually practicing standard algorithms." >>read more>> January 8, 2013 COMMON CORE STANDARDS ~ SCIENCE DRAFT RELEASED Please click on the link below from Education Week to review the latest Common Core Standards Science draft. >>read more>> January 7, 2013 DEBUNKING THE COMMON CORE "THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES" NARRATIVE…. "Do the CCSS proponents have anything other than opinions and ideology? This commentary was published in Winter 2011. I haven’t seen any data backing up CCSS proponents’ assertions, have you? That’s odd as they state CCSS is data driven. If they insist CCSS should be data driven, shouldn’t the foundational theory of their reforms consist of verifiable data to determine the veracity of their argument?" >>read more>> January 6, 2013 'TRICKLE-DOWN MANDATE' HURTS ED STANDARDS "Regardless of how proponents defined it, Common Core is in anything but voluntary. In actuality, it’s a $16 billion trickle-down mandate, the vast majority of which is unfunded." >>read more>> December 29, 2012 PA ON BOARD WITH COMMON CORE STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS "Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, said most members of his group support the standards. 'You do have to wonder whether these standards are harmful for struggling kids,' he said. 'And there are tremendous gaps in what various states spend on education.' Disparity in spending could make it difficult to implement common standards, Burkheit said." >>read more>> December 29, 2012 TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS FOR COMMON CORE ASSESSMENTS RELEASED, BUT NOT THE COSTS "The Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) released their technology requirements last week. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) released theirs earlier this month. Both are noticeably quiet on the costs." >>read more>> December 21, 2012 A ROTTEN APPLE FOR EDUCATION "The mainstream news media have been painfully slow to report on the implications of the Common Core, with the result that a national poll last summer showed that 8 in 10 voters don't have a clue what this emerging curricular blueprint is all about. A scholarly group at the Hoover Institution has rated the Common Core as one of the most neglected education stories of 2012." >>read more>> December 17, 2012 PHASING WESTERN CULTURE OUT OF EDUCATION "SBAC recently released 16 sample test questions. They reveal that the “transformation” of American education that Darling-Hammond had eagerly anticipated will be fulfilled—toward making students into global citizens, devoid of a sense of cultural heritage, and content with performing quick tasks that require little concentration." >>read more>> December 17, 2012 COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS INITIATIVE: TOO CLOSE TO A NATIONAL CURRICULUM "Due to laws prohibiting the creation of national tests, curriculum, and teacher certification, governors and state legislatures are the only policy makers who can actually decide whether or not to adopt the CCSS. While the federal government has encouraged the states to adopt the CCSS through federal incentives, the states are completely free to reject the CCSS." >>read more>> December 12, 2012 PRIVATE SCHOOLS--YOU SHOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE COMMON CORE "Through popular school choice efforts several states like Indiana and Louisiana have adopted school vouchers. While that seems great, and I am a proponent of school choice, vouchers seem to have unintended consequences for those who pushed for them – in that they give government a foot-in-the-door so to speak. Because of this I’m concerned about a collective silence from private schools about the Common Core State Standards." >>read more>> December 11, 2012 SANDRA STOTSKY: CCS DEVASTATING IMPACT ON LITERARY STUDY & ANALYTICAL THINKING "Common Core’s standards not only present a serious threat to state and local education authority, but also put academic quality at risk. Pushing fatally flawed education standards into America’s schools is not the way to improve education for America’s students." >>read more>> December 7, 2012 AMERICA'S NEXT EDUCATION 'CRISIS' AND WHO BENEFITS "One wonders, when will Americans — after being shocked into concern about an achievement gap and cattle-prodded to address a performance gap — tire of crisis language and notice that the real problem is that political leaders and “experts” in charge of education policy have a credibility gap?" >>read more>> December 2, 2012 COMMON CORE SPARKS WAR OVER WORDS "As states across the country implement broad changes in curriculum from kindergarten through high school, English teachers worry that they will have to replace the dog-eared novels they love with historical documents and nonfiction texts." >>read more>> |
| December 7, 2012 IT COULD BE EVEN WORSE "Anything that diverts teachers from their job of teaching or diverts attention away from students in favor of bureaucrats, is bad for Pennsylvania's schools. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) does both....States must express to federal policymakers that they need genuine relief from NCLB, not a strings-attached waiver from the law that will bind their hands down the road." >>read more>> Related article: November 28, 2012 NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND WAIVER TO BE SOUGHT BY PA "Mr. Tomalis said his 'overriding concern' about applying for a waiver is that it would prompt changes in the way assessment is performed in Pennsylvania and those changes could become obsolete in several years if a new federal law is enacted." >>read more>> |
| December 3, 2012 UNMENTIONABLE "When did the ideas of having our high school students read an actual complete history book or two and write an actual history research paper or two disappear into the woodwork? The result is that our students arrive in college poorly prepared to read nonfiction books and to write the required term papers, not to mention their inability to do any research." >>read more>> |
| November 30, 2012 REJECTION OF ANTI-COMMON CORE MODEL LEGISLATION A SAD END TO BIZARRE PROCESS "A decision by the board of directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) not to endorse model legislation opposing the so-called Common Core State Standards and testing after its own education task force’s public and private membership twice approved the model legislation is a sad ending to the highly flawed process directed by the organization." >>read more>> |
| November 29, 2012 TESTING GROUP SCALES BACK PERFORMANCE ITEMS "A group that is developing tests for half the states in the nation has dramatically reduced the length of its assessment in a bid to balance the desire for a more meaningful and useful exam with concerns about the amount of time spent on testing." >>read more>> |
| November 20, 2012 A NEW KIND OF PROBLEM: THE COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS "As the Common Core makes its way into real-life classrooms, I hope teachers are able to adjust its guidelines as they fit. I hope, for instance, that teachers will still be allowed to introduce the standard method for addition and subtraction in second grade rather than waiting until fourth. I also hope that teachers who favor direct instruction over an inquiry-based approach will be given this freedom. Unfortunately, the emails and newspaper articles I've been seeing may herald a new era where more and more students are given a flimsy make-believe version of mathematics, without the ability to solve actual math problems. After all, where the Common Core goes, textbook publishers are probably not too far behind." >>read more>> |
| November 10, 2012 EARLY EDUCATION OR EARLY INDOCTRINATION? "The United Nations is creeping into our educational system and not only changing the way our youngest learn academic basics, but challenging family beliefs on American sovereignty, parental rights, and freedom of religion." >>read more>> |
| November 6, 2012 NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS: IT'S NOT TOO LATE FOR STATES "But despite the significant momentum behind the effort, the idea of establishing national standards and tests was ultimately rejected. States and local school districts understood that Washington was overstepping its bounds to an unprecedented extent and chose instead to retain their educational sovereignty." >>read more>> |
| November 6, 2012 THE COMING STORM FOR COMMON STANDARDS: PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE? "It's taken more than two years for the Common Core State Standards to trickle down into schools and classrooms in a significant way. So it's no surprise, then, that a recent poll found that most people know nothing about the standards. But when public knowledge of the new guidelines becomes more widespread, what level of support will they have? That's where the poll offers some interesting tidbits." >>read more>> |
| November 2, 2012 SCORES DROP ON KENTUCKY'S COMMON CORE-ALIGNED TESTS "Results from new state tests in Kentucky—the first in the nation explicitly tied to the Common Core State Standards—show that the share of students scoring “proficient” or better in reading and math dropped by roughly a third or more in both elementary and middle school the first year the tests were given." >>read more>> |
| October 31, 2012 PARENTS QUESTION A NEW METHOD FOR TEACHING MATH "This curriculum (which they say is based on the Common Core Standards) puts an emphasis on critical thinking, rather than memorization, and collaborative learning. Children will learn mainly in groups, he said, adding that the teaching method emphasizes problem solving and working from concrete examples before progressing to the abstract." >>read more>> |
| October 28, 2012 BEWARE OF OBAMA CORE "President Obama’s Education Department, under the leadership of Secretary Arne Duncan, another product of Chicago politics, has established an Equity and Excellence Commission, charged with “finding ways to restructure school finance systems to achieve equity distribution of education resources and further student achievement and attainment.” Translation: Take resources from the suburbs and give them to urban school districts. " >>read more>> |
| October 20, 2012 COMMON CORE DEBATE NEEDED “Polls consistently reveal shocking majorities of voters are ignorant about the Common Core. For example, 79 percent of voters in a recent poll said they had heard "nothing" or "not much" about the Core, though nearly all states adopted it two years ago in the biggest and fastest education policy change in U.S. history. The public deserves better.” >>read more>> |
| October 19, 2012 COMMON CORE MANDATES WILL HARM CRITICAL THINKING "Reading researchers know there is absolutely no research to support the idea that more 'literary non-fiction' or 'informational' texts in the English class will increase students' level of analytical thinking. There is every reason to believe they will, instead, lower the level." >>read more>> |
| October 16, 2012 FIGHT FLARES OVER SCHOOL CURRICULUM “(T)he city has poured nearly $100 million into training principals and teachers on the new standards. Department of Education officials are also offering guidance on how to adapt current lesson plans.” >>read more>> (worth reading the comments by parents) |
| October 15, 2012 ARE YOU TECH READY FOR COMMON CORE "School districts are raising concerns about their ability to be technologically ready to give Common Core State Standards assessments to students online in two years. Administrators say they remain uncertain about the types of devices to buy, the bandwidth they need, and the funding available for technology improvements." >>read more>> |
| October 11, 2012 IS COMMON CORE ABOUT TO MELT DOWN? "The fears and problems are clear: What should students be told about nuclear power—or any other contentious issue—that the tests address? Who decides? Will evaluators really just grade students on the structure of their presentations, or whether students write things with which the evaluators agree? How will scoring be consistent among evaluators? Even if consistent, how will students and parents be assured of that?" >>read more>> |
| October 8, 2012 HELLO COMMON CORE, GOODBYE 'HUCK FINN' "As parents file into PTO meetings across the state this fall to hear about the implementation of Common Core, they should do so with a keen awareness of just what their children will be losing." >>read more>> |
| October 2, 2012 EXIT EXAMS FACE PINCH IN COMMON CORE PUSH "With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards—and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness—some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all." >>read more>> |
| September 30, 2012 UNCOMMON ALLIES QUESTION A COMMON CORE "Even those who endorse the concept of national standards should be uncomfortable with the pace of the implementation and the likelihood that a national assessment will advance efforts to assign students to college or vocational tracks and limit teachers’ capacity to inspire students." >>read more>> |
| September 29, 2012 STATES STARTING TO REBEL AGAINST COMMON CORE If officials or candidates are not interested in discussing the lack of constitutionality or terrible quality of the standards, remind them that Common Core implementation cost estimates vary between $16 and $60 BILLION dollars that will not be available from the federal government given current debt levels of $16 TRILLION dollars and the state deficits that many states have accumulated. >>read more>> |
| September 28, 2012 COULD REGRET NEW STUDENT TESTING "This computer-adaptive feature diminishes a primary argument made by Common Core proponents: that we must be able to compare student performance across states. Because students will be given different questions depending on their previous answers, they will essentially be taking different tests. The performance of Sarah in Easley can’t be compared to that of Mary in Topeka; it can’t even be compared to that of William at the next desk. Smarter Balanced may devise some rubric to allow rough comparisons, but a meaningful one-to-one comparison won’t be possible." >>read more>> |
| September 25, 2012 ROMNEY: NO FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR COMMON CORE Mitt Romney told NBC's Brian Williams today that he doesn't think the federal government should provide support—financial or otherwise—for common standards, which have been adopted by forty-six states and the District of Columbia." >>read more>> |
| September 23, 2012 DO NOT LET THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONALIZE THE SCHOOLS IN YOUR STATE "The possible RTTT federal money is tempting for the local school districts and other educational entities. They need to look more closely at the potential grant amounts. As the Table (Race to the Top Awards) illustrates, the awards averaged $71 per student per year. However, that was based on a total RTTT program cost of about $4.0 billion. Obama's latest "end run" is $400 million (about 10 % of the original program). This $400 million will be spread around the entire country to hundreds of educational entities." >>read more>> |
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Thanks to WORLD Magazine for this article: September 22, 2012 |
| September 21, 2012 TERRORIST PROFESSOR BILL AYERS & OBAMA'S FEDERAL SCHOOL CURRICULUM "Common Core is part of an effort to implement regionalism, the replacement of local governments by regional boards of federally appointed bureaucrats, who in turn are beholden to international bodies. Regionalism will eliminate the freedom parents now have in choosing neighborhoods with good schools because tax funds will be distributed equally. There will be no escape in home schooling or private schools either, because the curriculum will follow national tests. Students will be tracked through mandatory state records that will then be accessible to Washington bureaucrats. Ultimately, all students will be subject to education mandates implemented by Obama’s radical cronies." >>read more>> |
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September 21, 2012 The report-HOW COMMON CORE'S ELA STANDARDS PLACE COLLEGE READINESS AT RISK |
| September 19, 2012 THE (SECRET) DOCUMENT THAT DRIVES STANDARDIZED TESTING "(A) testing industry executive warned me not to reveal the specifics of a secret document currently being written—a document that, in my judgment, will effectively embed the findings of fraudulent, biased research in educational testing into US law. Among the several nasty effects should be an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars on millions of new and worse-than-worthless 'audit tests'. The number of tests administered to our elementary-secondary students could double in some areas, but the quality of the results available from all tests will deteriorate." >>read more>> |
| September 19, 2012 SCHOOLKIDS MISSING THE TWAIN "Pioneer Institute research found that Massachusetts students are among the nation’s best in writing, and that they made enormous strides since the commonwealth’s literature-rich standards were adopted in the late 1990s. This should come as no surprise; to write well, students must read great writing. But with its adoption of Common Core, Massachusetts has chosen to hit the reset button on nearly two decades of unparalleled student achievement." >>read more>> |
| September 5, 2012 COMMON CORE AND THE VEHICLE OF OUR FUTURE “When you buy a car you are buying something that will reliably deliver you to your destination. Your state adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and you, as a taxpayer, are in the process paying for something you will never own. The CCSS will not get our students college and career ready, insure student academic success, provide a secure future, or protect our liberty. A new car will get you to your destination while the CCSS is an expensive vehicle that will drive our country further down the road of mediocrity.” >>read more>> |
| August 29, 2012 COMMON CORE: OUR NEW NATIONAL CURRICULUM “Other countries that have federally mandated curriculums, like China and France, have found that a national curriculum did not put them at the top academically. China has never had a Nobel Prize winner. Many countries that perform worse than the United States on International assessments have national standards.” >>read more>> |
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Thank you to WORLD magazine: August 25, 2012 |
| August 20, 2012 STANDARDS DON’T MAKE THE GRADE "North Carolina jumped aboard the Common Core train a couple of years ago, in response to large financial incentives from the federal government. Proponents emphasized that the new standards were national but not federal, in the sense that they were created by associations of state political and education leaders rather than the U.S. Department of Education. So what? The problem lies not in who wrote the standards but in the standards themselves. We can do better. And in the interest of economic competitiveness alone, we need to do better." >>read more>> |
| August 8, 2012 COMMON CORE STANDARDS DEVELOPERS HIRED TO HELP FAILING SCHOOLS IN NEW JERSEY "The Christie Administration just hired the Council of Chief State School Officers to help the New Jersey Department of Education develop school turnaround strategies. They are being paid $1.55 million to do this....They don’t have preconceived notions regarding New Jersey, that’s funny… they seemed to think they knew what was best for every state in the union when they developed the Common Core State Standards along with the National Governors’ Association." >>read more>> |
| Summer 2012 THE COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS "I believe the Common Core marks the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States. No state has any reason left to aspire for first-rate standards, as all states will be judged by the same mediocre national benchmark enforced by the federal government." >>read more>> |
| August 7, 2012 SOLVING THE TEXTBOOK-COMMON CORE CONUNDRUM "Educational publishers have the resources to create comprehensive and effective materials that could significantly support teachers’ efforts to realize the promise of the new standards. Empowering well-informed adoption teams to make intelligent selections of effective instructional materials and then having teachers use them in the classroom are key steps in making the necessary changes to implement the new standards with fidelity." >>read more>> |
| August 6, 2012 UTAH DROPS OUT OF CONSORTIUM DEVELOPING COMMON CORE TESTS "The state school board decided to withdraw Friday from a consortium of states working to develop tests based on new Common Core academic standards, after months of pressure from some conservatives." >>read more>> |
| August 3, 2012 INDIANA SUPERINTENDENT: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION NATIONALIZED COMMON CORE STANDARDS "At a Tea Party gathering last month, Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett expressed his concern with the growing federal overreach of Common Core education standards. 'This administration has an insatiable appetite for federal overreach,' he said. 'The federal government’s involvement in these standards is wrong.' " >>read more>> |
| July 24, 2012 DON'T BUY THE SNAKE OIL OF COMMON CORE "...the nation's teachers will find it difficult to implement these standards. And that the training they received in the nation's education schools is one of the major sources of their difficulty...The very effort to develop the national standards that have been sprung upon this country is a response (however poorly thought out and executed) to the dismal results of the ideas about curriculum and instruction prospective teachers and administrators have been taught by our education schools for over half a century." >>read more>> |
| July 20, 2012 MILGRAM ON COMMON CORE vs. INDIANA MATH STANDARDS Dr. James Milgram of Stanford University answers some questions about the Common Core Standards. >>read more>> Related article: July 17, 2012 JIM MILGRAM ON THE COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS >>read more>> |
| July 19, 2012 COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS IS HEAVY ON THE 'COMMON' "The Common Core seems to create a façade of academic rigor to hide the perpetuation – or even proliferation – of mediocrity. The new standards supposedly will produce students who are 'ready for first-year credit-bearing, post-secondary coursework in mathematics and English without the need for remediation.' This suggests that all post-secondary coursework is created equal." >>read more>> |
| July 17, 2012 STANDARDIZED TESTS OF TOMORROW BEHIND SCHEDULE, ACCORDING TO INSIDER SURVEY “(A) new survey, … suggests that ‘education insiders’ aren't so sure that the one of the new tests will resolve all of the issues with standardized testing. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed reported that they believe the Smarter, Balanced Assessment Coalition one of the two state-based consortia developing the tests, is on the wrong track.” >>read more>> |
| June 16, 2012 ROMNEY CAN SCORE BY HITTING OBAMA ON ACADEMIC STANDARDS “Where will the states get the money to pay for CCS? No one knows, except that it won't come from the feds. States that are laying off thousands of teachers and cutting school days are expected to mortgage themselves to subsidize the publishing and testing industries. And for what? The Brookings Institute says the net benefit of the new standards for American students will be zero. Academic standards, by themselves, don't do much.” >>read more>> |
| May 23, 2012 DESIGNING COMMON CORE TESTS FOR ALL PROVING A CHALLENGE "Although more students with disabilities than ever are included in state testing programs, the task of giving these students high-quality assessments in the future that measure how adept they are at mastering the Common Core State Standards seems to have an endless number of hurdles to overcome before students face these new assessments in the 2014-15 school year." >>read more>> |
| *May 21, 2012 THE WRONG LESSON ON NATIONAL STANDARDS The next time you would like to opine about why you and others should set national standards, curricula, and testing for America’s 50 million schoolchildren, I would ask you to reflect on your and your peers' lack of even the most basic understanding of our Founding principles." >>read more>> |
| May 16, 2012 INCOMING COLLEGE BOARD PRESIDENT WANTS S.A.T. TO REFLECT COMMON CORE "With $360 million in federal Race to the Top funds, all but five states are collaborating, in two groups, to design tests for those standards. Public institutions of higher education have pledged support to the idea of using a “college-readiness” cutoff score on those tests to allow students to skip remedial work and enroll in entry-level, credit-bearing courses. Leaders of that effort have been careful to emphasize that the common assessments will be used for course placement, not college admissions." >>read more>> Related article: May 21, 2012 THE WRONG LESSON ON NATIONAL STANDARDS “The next time you would like to opine about why you and others should set national standards, curricula, and testing for America’s 50 million schoolchildren, I would ask you to reflect on your and your peers' lack of even the most basic understanding of our Founding principles.” >>read more>> |
| May 10, 2012 NATIONAL CURRICULUM PLAN MAY FACE CHALLENGE “An influential group of conservative state lawmakers is on the verge of proposing model legislation to block the Common core national education standards that have been heavily promoted by the Obama administration.” >>read more>> |
| May 9, 2012 IS THE COMMON CORE JUST A DISTRACTION? "One interpretation of the emphasis on developing the Common Core curriculum is that these debates provide a convenient distraction from potentially more intractable fights over bigger reform ideas like teacher evaluations, expanded school choice, or improved accountability systems." >>read more>> |
| May 6, 2012 COMMON CORE RESEARCH IS ‘JUST ANOTHER PIECE OF MISLEADING ADVOCACY’ “What Dr. Schmidt presented is just another piece of misleading advocacy research, brought to you and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and channeled through the friendly services of Achieve (which received a recent $375K grant for advocacy from the Gates Foundation), the Foundation for Excellence in Education (which received a recent $1M grant for advocacy from the Gates Foundation), CCSSO (which received $9.5M last year from the Gates Foundation to promote the Common Core), and Chiefs for Change (funded by the Foundation for Excellence in Education).” >>read more>> |
| May 3, 2012 COLORADO BOARD OF ED REJECTS ADOPTION OF MULTI-STATE TESTING "Colorado Board of Education isn’t the only body expressing concern of federal intrusion into education decisions traditionally made by states and local communities, and that sees national test-drafting and curriculum-drafting groups being “clearly all about” the eventual adoption of a national curriculum." >>read more>> |
| May 2, 2012 CONTROVERSY OVER COMMON CORE SHOWS NO SIGNS OF SUBSIDING "As the adoption of Common Core Curriculum is drawing closer, the critics on both sides of the political divide are attacking the efforts. Although the national standards that became the CC were envisioned as voluntary, after the Obama Administration made their adoption a prerequisite to the further granting of the No Child Left Behind waivers, conservative lawmakers, who saw the CC as federal overreach, started protesting." >>read more>> |
| May 1, 2012 SELF-DEALING AMONG EDUCATION OFFICIALS "I fully agree with Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution who has been saying that in most instances higher standards don’t correlate with higher student achievement, but those states (like Massachusetts) that have used standards to drive the iron triangle of curricula, accountability and teacher quality, win big on student achievement." >>read more>> |
| April 30, 2012 COMMON CORE STANDARDS DRIVE WEDGE IN EDUCATION CIRCLES "A high-profile effort by a pair of national education groups to strengthen, simplify and focus the building blocks of elementary and secondary education is finally making its way into schools. But two years ahead of its planned implementation, critics on both the right and left are seizing upon it. A few educators say the new standards, supported by the U.S. Department of Education, are untested, and one Republican governor wants to block the measure, saying it's a federal intrusion into local decisions." >>read more>> |
| April 29, 2012 BATTLE LINES DRAWN IN COMMON CORE STANDARDS: WHOLE LANGUAGE VS. PHONICS "(A) big argument has erupted over the Common Core Standards between those who know it is crucial for students to achieve mastery in sounding out words to the automaticity level vs. those whole language proponents who rely upon their prereading strategies (i.e., metacognitive strategies) that actually eliminate the need for students to be able to read the text." >>read more>> |
| April 26, 2012 SARAH PALIN WAS A PROPHET ABOUT OBAMA'S EDUCATION TAKEOVER "Sarah Palin was the first to recognize the problem: By participating in President Obama's signature education initiative, the Common Core Standards, Alaska would lose control over its own curriculum." >>read more>> |
| April 25, 2012 CONCERN ABOUNDS OVER TEACHERS' PREPAREDNESS FOR STANDARDS, AS MANY TEACHERS NOT READY FOR THE COMMON CORE "many teachers won't be inclined to actually change what they are doing until they become familiar with the assessments aligned to the new standards." >>read more>> |
| April 24, 2012 MATH TEACHING OFTEN DOESN'T FIT WITH NEW STANDARDS "Many mathematics teachers are teaching topics at higher or lower grade levels—and for more years—than the Common Core State Standards recommend, according to preliminary results from new research. That finding suggests that when the new standards are fully implemented, many math teachers could face significant shifts in what they will teach." >>read more>> |
| April 23, 2012 WHY STATES SHOULD HOP OFF THE NATIONAL STANDARDS BANDWAGON "States across the nation are doing just that: reforming education by putting control back into the hands of parents and local leaders and empowering them with school choice. Common Core education standards would undermine these efforts by giving greater control to Washington. States that have adopted Common Core standards should reverse course and push back on federal control of standards and curriculum, ensuring that the needs of students—not Washington—come first." >>read more>> |
| April 23, 2012 COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS FAIL TO ADD UP "The push to nationalize the content taught in public schools across the country should be of great concern to state leaders. The Common Core national standards effort represents a massive federal overreach into what is taught in local schools, further removing parents from the educational decision-making process, and likely to cost state taxpayers $16 billion over seven years just to implement." >>read more>> |
| April 19, 2012 ANTI-COMMON CORE FLIER HITS DELEGATE MAILBOXES Stakeholders in Utah fight the Common Core standards participation by their state. >>read more>> |
| April 18, 2012 DOES THE COMMON CORE MATTER? "On the basis of past experience with standards, the most reasonable prediction is that the common core will have little to no effect on student achievement." >>read more>> |
| April 16, 2012 ROBOT ESSAY GRADING “A direct comparison between human graders and software designed to score student essays achieved virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases proving to be more reliable, a groundbreaking study has found.” >>read more>> Related article: April 30, 2012 ROBOT GRADERS BEHAVING BADLY “In Concord, MA, there was a print shop that had a sign: “Good, Fast, Cheap: CHOOSE TWO, the point being you could not have all three. It seems clear to me that the Deeper Learning Project of the Hewlett Foundation is looking for writing assessment that is fast and cheap. It is hard to beat 16,000 “scores” in 20 seconds.” The interview goes on to discuss just how “good” it can be. >>read more>> |
| April 16, 2012 STATES MUST REJECT NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME "States and local school districts can have success improving their standards and assessments without surrendering control to Washington. Increasing transparency of outcomes in a way that is meaningful to parents and taxpayers, providing flexibility for local school leaders, and advancing systemic reforms that include school choice options for families will go a long way in improving academic outcomes while at the same time preserving local control of education." >>read more>> |
| April 12, 2012 OBAMA'S 2013 EDUCATION BUDGET: COSTLY FEDERAL CONTROL EXPANSION "At a time when American taxpayers are calling for fiscal restraint in Washington, including restraint at the Department of Education, the budget and blueprint create a path to continued federal profligacy. These are proposals that exacerbate the existing bureaucratic maze of federal programs and further remove educational decision-making authority from state and local policymakers." >>read more>> |
| March 30, 2012 AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMIE GASS: THOSE PESKY LITTLE THINGS CALLED LAWS “It’s a very troubling development in our democracy, but especially in K-12 education, which is supposed to teach our schoolchildren about the basic tenants of the rule of law. When unelected DC education trade groups and private foundations are willing to work with federal officials to either violate or circumvent federal laws, something has gone seriously wrong. These laws that proscribe the limits of national standards, testing, and curricula are not just a list of recommendations, but clear and longstanding prohibitions.” >>read more>> |
| March 25, 2012 THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (TEACHER-PROOF RIDES AGAIN) "The process of implementing the Common Core Standards is under way in districts across the country as almost every state has now signed onto the Common Core, (some of them agreeing to do in hopes of winning Race to the Top money from Washington D.C.). The initiative is intended to ensure that students in all parts of the country are learning from the same supposedly high standards. As we looked through the exemplar, examined a lesson previously created by some of our colleagues, and then began working on our own Core-related lessons, I was struck by how out of sync the Common Core is with what I consider to be good teaching. I have not yet gotten to the “core” of the Core, but I have scratched the surface, and I am not encouraged." >>read more>> |
| March 2012 AN UNCOMMON APPROACH TO COSTLY COMMON CORE EDUCATION STANDARDS “Almost every state in the nation has rushed to join the Common Core curriculum movement with hardly a thought of the cost, financial or otherwise. In most cases, however, the ‘states’ have barely been involved. Simply put, massive educational bureaucracies have signed on to the Common Core and have expected, and generally received, no interference from the three branches of government....The Common Core provides a perfect example of how quickly a state can lose control of its K-12 educational system. Obviously, curriculum is central to education.” >>read more>> |
| Summer 2012 THE COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS: ARE THEY A STEP FORWARD OR BACKWARD? "... Common Core marks the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States. No state has any reason left to aspire for first-rate standards, as all states will be judged by the same mediocre national benchmark enforced by the federal government. Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations. While they may not admit it, they have a vested interest in lowering the accountability bar for their members." >>read more>> |
| March 1, 2012 THINK COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ARE STATE LED? GET THE FACTS A history of how Common Core Standards have been in the works for years and where it all began. >>read more>> |
| February 2012 NATIONAL COST OF ALIGNING STATES AND LOCALITIES TO THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS "Implementation of the Common Core standards is likely to represent substantial additional expense for most states. While a handful of states have begun to analyze these costs, most states have signed on to the initiative without a thorough, public vetting of the costs and benefits." >>read more>> |
| February 27, 2012 MEET THE CHILDREN WHERE THEY ARE...AND KEEP THEM THERE "Say what you will about CCSS, but there are three big ideas embedded within the English Language Arts standards that deserve to be at the very heart of literacy instruction in U.S. classrooms, with or with or without standards themselves. " >>read more>> |
| February 24, 2012 THE CORE CONUNDRUM "Whether you think that is a worthy goal is beside the point. Over the last fifty years Congress has repeatedly told the executive branch of the U.S. government “keep out” of the school curriculum." >>read more>> |
| February 24, 2012 'SAY I THREATENED YOU AGAIN, AND YOU'LL REALLY BE SORRY!' "Why is Duncan lashing out? Quite possibly, he’s reacting to a recent spate of research and commentary attacking the Common Core based on its highly dubious legality, quality, and odds of success." >>read more>> |
| February 23, 2012 WHY COMMON CORE STANDARDS WILL FAIL "The idea that common standards might create efficiencies and motivations that raise achievement is disproved by what has happened in the many states that created their own standards. Those states still have some schools scoring very well and others scoring miserably. That variation has not declined, defying happy talk from Common Core advocates." >>read more>> |
| February 16, 2012 TEAM OBAMA HIJACKS SCHOOLS' CORE STANDARDS "Last week, two of the top former lawyers for the federal Department of Education released a peer-reviewed report showing the administration violating or evading three separate federal laws by pressuring states to adopt a national core curriculum. Those laws exist for good reason: Control of educational content by the national government risks creating a national system of indoctrination, without local recourse to diversity of thought." >>read more>> |
| *February 11, 2012 IS THE US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION VIOLATING FEDERAL LAW BY DIRECTING STANDARDS, TESTS, AND CURRICULA? "Despite three federal laws that prohibit federal departments or agencies from directing, supervising or controlling elementary and secondary school curricula, programs of instruction and instructional materials, the U.S. Department of Education has placed the nation on the road to a national curriculum, according to a new report written by a former general counsel and former deputy general counsel of the United States Department of Education." >>read more>> |
| January 2012 COMMON CORE STANDARDS AREN'T CHEAP "Numerous states currently struggling in the midst of steep education budget cuts may have more fiscal problems than they realize. Though 45 states rushed to adopt Common Core standards in the past two years, many have not taken the time to evaluate what the adoption of these standards will cost them. States that jumped on the Common Core bandwagon in hopes of securing Obama administration grant money may find themselves increasingly strapped for cash in the next few years as implementation costs begin to accumulate." >>read more>> |
| January 2012 KENTUCKY TEACHERS SHOW LITTLE PROGRESS UNDER COMMON CORE "A new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality has claimed that the state of Kentucky has failed to show considerable improvements in the two years since it implemented Common Core standards." >>read more>> |
| December 19, 2011 NATIONALIZATION TRAIN STARTS GOING OFF THE TRACK "As the train moves further along and the full implications of nationalizing key aspects of the education system become more obvious to everyone, more and more people will jump that train. Without significant coercion it will be very hard to keep everyone on board until they reach the station where standards, assessments, and curriculum are all centrally imposed." >>read more>> |
| December 4, 2011 CHOKING ON THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS "In reality, then, these standards were written by highly educated adults who do not teach children at present and, possibly, never did. Unconnected to the scientific research on children’s intellectual and emotional development and the everyday realities of children’s needs, interests and behavior, these writers relied only the folklore of academia, fantasizing not only what children should be expected to know and do, but also what adults need to function in actual colleges and workplaces." >>read more>> |
| November 28, 2011 IMPLEMENTING COMMON CORE COULD COST STATES $30 BILLION “Many states have not evaluated the cost of implementing the Core, notes a 2011 McGraw-Hill education brief, but will be working through implementation in the next three years, so by 2014 most changes will be in place….Beyond the taxpayer-paid costs of implementing the Common Core, states are weighing the perhaps even greater cost of ceding education authority to federal control.” >>read more>> |
| November 2, 2011 OBAMA ED AIMS AT U.S. TAKEOVER "Home School Legal Defense A's federal relations staff have read this 868-page bill, and we believe that while it does not directly impact homeschool freedom, the bill will 1) increase the federal role in education at the expense of state, local and parental control, and 2) will greatly increase the pressure on states to align their curriculum and standards, resulting in de facto national education standards...While some specifics that could be included in a final bill remain unclear, 'the trend of national standards could lead to homeschoolers losing the freedom to choose the curriculum for their children.'...national standards would remove control from local boards and districts and allow 'unelected bureaucrats, not parents' to decide what subjects should be taught." >>read more>> |
| October 20, 2011 THE MARXIST REDISTRIBUTION OF TEACHERS AND FORCED CCSS “Good news for schools on getting rid of AYP but if you’re successful, it’s time to chop that school up and send some of those teachers to failing schools to make sure they get quality teachers too. Oh, and don’t miss the great news that the Feds aren’t mandating national standards, they’ll just force you to be on “college- and career-ready” standards. Gee, I wonder where we can find national standards that will fit that bill? Oh yeah, the CCSS are available for use.” >>read more>> |
| October 11, 2011 NATIONAL FEDERATION OF REPUBLICAN WOMEN RESOLUTION NFRW passed this resolution unanimously to ‘Defeat National Standards for State Schools’ >>read more>> |
| September 26, 2011 WITH WAIVERS, NATIONAL STANDARDS ANYTHING BUT VOLUNTARY "Now, the conditions-based NCLB waivers, with their requirement for national standards, get to the heart of the matter: The Common Core State Standards Initiative has been pushed as far as it has gotten in large part by federal dollars and pressure. This push for national standards and tests has become a federal enterprise—and a dangerous direction for our nation’s education system." >>read more>> |
| September 21, 2011 JAY GREENE’S TESTIMONY ON NATIONAL STANDARDS BEFORE US HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE “The progress we were making in education, however, stalled when we started significantly centralizing education and reducing the extent of choice and competition among districts. The policies, practices, and funding of schools has increasingly shifted to the state and national governments and greater uniformity has been imposed by unionization. The enemy of high standards and improving outcomes is centralization.” >>read more>> |
| September 14, 2011 SENATOR RUBIO TO SECRETARY DUNCAN: CAJOLING STATES TO ADOPT OBAMA EDUCATION REFORMS UNCONSTITUTIONAL Rubio: “This initiative is an overstep of authority that undermines existing law, and violates the constitutional separation of powers.” >>read more>> |
| September 4, 2011 NATIONAL STANDARDS WON'T HELP, WON'T WORK "They are executing plans for instruction in all grades and, eventually, common assessments in math and English language arts. It sounds great. But it won’t help and won’t work. Such specific standards stifle creativity and conflict with a two-century American preference for local decision-making about schools....We should focus on better teaching methods and better training of teachers, as well as school structures that help educators work more as teams." >>read more>> |
| August 22, 2011 THE STEALTH STRATEGY OF NATIONAL STANDARDS “It was also interesting that once I pressed people to say why they supported nationalization out loud, the flaws and limitations of their arguments became apparent — even to themselves. Having to articulate your reasons can serve as a useful check on whether people have really thought something through.” >>read more>> |
| August 10, 2011 FEDERAL EDUCATION AGENDA DUMBED DOWN "There seem to be few limits on how far the administration will go to foist its ill-conceived national standards upon states. That apparently includes slamming the door on the only escape hatch available to countless underprivileged students. What began with great promise has devolved into disaster." >>read more>> |
| August 10, 2011 SCHOOLS MISLEAD BY DUMBING DOWN THE MEANING OF 'PROFICIENT' By offering waivers and removing the “failing” school label, the Education Department hopes to give states more flexibility and encourage them to raise standards by removing the risk they’ll be stigmatized by low test scores. But raising the bar isn’t the cure-all for states and school districts: Their students should be expected to reach it.” >>read more>> |
| August 4, 2011 EDUCATION TO RAISE TECHNOLOGY CONSUMERS INSTEAD OF TECHNOLOGY CREATORS "This framework does not expect our students to be able to do any science, or to be able to solve any science problem. This framework simply teaches our students science appreciation, rather than science. It expects our students to become good consumers of science and technology, rather than prepare them to be the discoverers of science and creators of technology." >>read more>> |
| June 24, 2011 CONFUSION OVER NATIONAL STANDARDS “If, as Bush and Klein argue, most states have woefully inadequate standards, isn’t it likely that the central bureaucracy you’re creating will gravitate to mediocrity rather than excellence? And isn’t that just what Common Core represents, given that its standards for what count as “college ready” are actually set below what you need to even apply to, much less succeed at, most colleges?” >>read more>> |
| June 2011 COMMON CORE SPARKS WAR “Despite all the financial inducements to cede state educational control to federal bureaucrats, counter-manifesto signatory Shelby Steele of Stanford University's Hoover Institution urged Americans to consider the long-term consequences. ‘Decentralization has been the engine of educational innovation. We shouldn't trade our federalist birthright for a national-curriculum mess of pottage,’ he said.” >>read more>> |
| June 2011 "COUNTER-MANIFESTO" CHALLENGES COMMON CORE STANDARDS “A coalition of more than 150 education reformers, state and federal policymakers past and present, teachers, and opinion leaders has released a manifesto opposing a state and federal government effort to establish a national curriculum and testing system.” >>read more>> |
| May 23, 2011 THE CORE BETWEEN THE STATES “ ‘Common Core’ is the name attached to 12 standards for mathematics and English Language Arts/Reading that 40-plus states have now adopted. These standards are to guide the development of common assessments and curricula for these states. A good many colleges and universities also use the name “common core” for the mandatory part of their curricula, but the capitalized Common Core is very much its own thing.” >>read more>> |
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May 9, 2011 AGAINST A NATIONAL CURRICULUM
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| April 6, 2011 STANDARDS OVERREACH, OR ACCORDING TO PLAN? “(J)ust by defining the goal you are driving curricula, stating what must be taught. Indeed, there would be no point to the standards if the intention weren’t in some way to affect curricula — what is actually taught in the schools.” >>read more>> |
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April 5, 2011 "A Massachusetts school committee has petitioned their legislature to opt out of Federal education standards which most states have adopted in attempt to get federal funding during lean budget times." |
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September 27, 2010 SCHOOL REFORM'S NEXT FRONTIER E. D. Hirsch says: Translate new standards into good curriculum that puts reading first |
| September 17, 2010 COMMON CORE STANDARDS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A BAD IDEA “Children will never be adequately educated under a system run by bureaucrats handing out money and the teachers unions (the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers) spending the money in the classroom. The NEA and the AFT also have extraordinary millions of dollars extracted from their members to lobby for policies they want to have enacted by Congress, state legislatures and school boards and also to elect their favored political candidates.” >>read more<< |
| September 15, 2010 ARE WE READY FOR TESTING UNDER CCSS? “There's a bumpy road ahead on the way to a successful Common Core State Standards (CCSS) movement. Already states and districts are examining the match between current standards, what they currently teach at various grade levels, and the CCSS. Of particular significance is that online tests will become the norm in the years ahead for many states.” >>read more<< |
| September 9, 2010 MARK YOUR CALENDARS “September 9 was the date that Checker Finn and the Fordham Institute began to turn against the national standards movement they so enthusiastically championed.” >>read more<< |
| September 9, 2010 SHAKY NEW STANDARDS FOR COLLEGE READINESS “It is not too early to ask what will happen when high school sophomores or juniors pass these high stakes tests and are declared to be "college-ready." Will two or four year public colleges be required to place them in credit-bearing freshman courses if these students want to avoid meeting high school graduation requirements? Probably. It is also likely that college instructors will find themselves compelled, for the sake of survival, to adopt texts at the middle and high school level of difficulty in order to ensure that these "college-ready" students can read what is assigned, do the mathematics in them, and pass their college freshman courses.” >>read more<< |
| September 2010 THE DEBATE OVER COMMON CORE STANDARDS FOR K-12 IS HEATING UP “Although the idea of common standards at the state level has long been talked about by educators and policymakers, the movement received its most significant support last year. That was when the Common Core States Standards Initiative was announced, promoting the same set of standards for use in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. The initiative won the backing of the National Governors Association as well as the Council of Chief State School Officers. Governors and chief state school officers from 48 states promised state-led efforts to develop core standards that will be based on research.” >>read more<< |
| August 25, 2010 THE NATIONAL STANDARDS COME WITH NO GUARANTEE “These standards and the upcoming assessments are a huge and long-shot gamble. That may be okay for a state and localities to do, when they are picking up 90 percent of the tab for K-12 education. It's another thing when the feds pay a mere 10 percent of the cost of educating our kids and then insist that we be their guinea pig.” >>read more<< |
| August 12, 2010 WHAT CAN PARENTS EXPECT TO SEE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOMS AFTER COMMON CORE’S STANDARDS BEGIN TO BE IMPLEMENTED? “A Worst Case Scenario—But Probably Not Far from Reality Common Core’s ELA standards assume that if English teachers are compelled to assign a lot of informational texts, students will learn how to read them. They won’t if these teachers don’t teach close, analytical reading.” >>read more<< |
| August 10, 2010 THE QUIET REVOLUTION DESERVES LOUD OPPOSITION “This "quiet revolution" isn't about better educational options for American children. It's about control, pure and simple.” >>read more<< |
| August 5, 2010 THE ASCENT OF AMERICA’S CHOICE & THE CONTINUING DESCENT OF AMERICA’S HIGH SCHOOLS “With an additional $30,000,000 to come to Marc Tucker’s NCEE from the USED’s “competition” for assessment consortia grants, his hare-brained scheme for enticing high school sophomores or juniors deemed “college-ready” by the results of the Cambridge University-adapted “Board” exams that he plans to pilot in 10 states (including Massachusetts now) comes closer to reality.” >>read more<< |
| August 4, 2010 ACQUISITION NEWS IN THE WORLD OF STANDARDS, TESTS “Some players in the common-standards-and-assessments arena have announced a business deal.” >>read more<< |
| *July 2010 COMMON CORE STANDARDS STILL DON'T MAKE THE GRADE >>read more>> |
| July 30, 2010-08-06 PROFESSOR JAMES MILGRAM’S REVIEW OF COMMON CORE MATH STANDARDS Professor Milgram's Full Review with Detailed Grade Level Comments >>read more<< |
| July 29, 2010 STOTSKY ON THE COMMON CORE VOTE IN MASSACHUSETTS “There needs to be more public attention to the quality of Common Core’s ELA (and mathematics) standards. There also needs to be public attention to the methodology of the reports of several national organizations all claiming to show that Common Core’s ELA standards are among the best in this country, all being used to sway the vote of our state boards of education.” >>read more<< |
| July 29, 2010 ‘HARD TRUTH’ ON EDUCATION NEW, HIGHER STANDARDS FOR PROFICIENCY ALTER VIEW OF YEARS OF PERCEIVED GAINS “Erasing years of academic progress, state education officials on Wednesday acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of children had been misled into believing they were proficient in English and math, when in fact they were not.” >>read more<< |
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June 2, 2010
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| May 10, 2010 DO YOU BELIEVE US NOW? “Pearson will not only provide the curriculum and test materials but will also provide teacher training and community support. I cannot even imagine how much the entire Pearson package will cost a local school district, but it will undoubtedly be a small fortune.” >>read more<< |
| December 29, 2009 Red Flags, National PTA, and Common Core Standards “Some general and well written articles have been published recently with serious concerns about the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), a federal push to nationalize mathematics and reading standards in American public schools.* Other, more specific, articles have focused on the National PTA’s involvement. These reports should send an alarming signal to parents, educators and legislators as that group ‘positions itself as a key player at the front line of education reform” with regards to the CCSSI’.” >>read more>> |
| December 11, 2009 Alternative Needed to Common Core Standards “The new consortium would endeavor to create better and more rigorous academic standards than those of the CCSSI. These alternative standards will be truly internationally benchmarked. With over twenty per cent of the American population, such a consortium of states would easily qualify as “significant” as well. Such states might even be joined by other states that do not want to embrace the intellectually impoverished and internationally uncompetitive Common Core standards.” >>read more>> |
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January 6, 2009 Racing to National Tests "While everyone in educatorland obsesses over the $4 billion competition among the states for Race to the Top (RTT) funding, the Education Department (ED) is readying a separate competition for less than one-tenth as much money that may nonetheless prove far more consequential for American education over the long term. I am referring to the upcoming announcement of how $350 million will be meted out to “consortia of states” to develop “common assessments” that are aligned with 'common standards.' " |
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January 14, 2010 |
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January 31, 2010 |
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February 6, 2010 |
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Commonwealth Education Organization . 3830 Saxonburg Blvd. Cheswick , Pa. 15024 . (412) 967-9691
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