Common Core Standards are a minor but inarguable improvement over alternatives.

Common Core is about as grassroots as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and teachers had about as much input into it as a McDonalds menu.

Common Core was started by Achieve.Inc.

reply to post by QuantumCypher


I've really gone back and forth over the last couple hours about whether to engage with you. I'm pretty sure it's a waste of both of our times to shout at one another. I'm not moving in your direction, and you are not moving in mine. That is plain as day to me. But for the sake of anyone following the thread, I'll try to respond.

The Common Core movement was predated by the movement toward Standards-Based Education. This seems to have started in the 80's. en.wikipedia.org...

The idea of measuring the performance or competency of a student or a teacher is not new. It is also not a dark corporate plot to enslave populations into servitude. It is what any reasonable population of people would do if they were curious about how their schools were doing.

When I was a kid, we took a couple standardized tests, maybe in the 6th and 8th grades (this was in the 80's), and presumably this was the first attempt to measure school performance. The purpose of this, if I'm to surmise, was to begin to chisel away at assessing teacher and school performance.

That's the tactical aim. The strategic aim was to begin to corner teachers' unions into a set of more meritocritous promotion and termination policies.

States have had their own educational standards for a long time. These standards, and these bubble tests, which I took, before the 90's, led to state teaching standards. Florida had its FCAT standards; Massachusetts had its MCAS standards. And so on and so forth. These state standards were independent from what other states thought, but at plenty of national gatherings of teachers and administrators, these standards were compared and discussed.

Corporations and philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in the 90's, for what lille I actually know first-hand, saw all of this happening and attempted to help.

I understand that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has a real enthusiasm for supporting the improvement of math and science education in the United States. The reason for this was Bill's experience trying to find competent American engineers for his company, and he found that there was something wrong in our production of good engineers from our schools. Why was that. What were the obstacles. What were the problems. Should that be something a philanthrope such as himself would want to run down? Sure. That would be fine. That does not, on its face, seem particularly pernicious.

Other corporations, I'm sure at his urging, joined him in attempting to help Massachusetts educators and Florida and Georgia and Vermont educators, to come together and discuss how they might improve and consolidate their efforts in teaching Algebra 1, which to this point every single state was taking up wholly independent of the efforts of neighboring states.

Corporations donate money and participate in philanthropic efforts to hide some of their revenue from taxes, and to convince their shareholders that they're healthy and decent enough that their stock price is in no peril. I'll stipulate for the sake of argument that they also *creepily attempt to enslave the population to turn our children into mindless drones*. But really, it's the first thing. They want to seem nice, before they wake up tomorrow and have to fire a bunch of truck drivers, because they've reallocated distribution to another channel.

These corporate philanthropists contributed to help the states get together to talk to one another. I've never heard the words "Bill and Melinda" said in succession within the four walls of any publishing business I've worked at.

I've sat in in Master Teacher Boards, at the state level, where a room full of SC people compare three sample lessons and tables of contents and presentation materials, and they give us their opinion of what will help them teach a course in their state. Not once has it ever been uttered or suggested by anyone that they needed to have a certain content item added or removed so that they could get it paid for by their corporate betters. Never. I've never heard it hinted at or implied. The big corporate conspiracy to manipulate teaching tools that are purchased by states? It. Is Not. There.

It's also not coming. States open adoptions, which has to pass through their state congress for funding. Teacher Boards review submissions. They're picky. They complain, we fix them, they make their choices. These people are ornery, and they're particular, and they know their subject matter. And they get the books they want.

You're right that I blew that other guy off and minimized his argument. He's flatly wrong.

He thinks the same of me.

reply to post by michael22

I would like to thank you first of all, for replying in a civil manner and attempting to argue your point of view in a rational manner instead of blowing me off as you did crimvelvet, and admitting that you did so. My opinion of you went up significantly for doing so. And so I will acknowledge an overly aggressive tone to my original post, and apologize accordingly.
Unfortunately you are right, I don't think we can come to any agreement on this.
Setting aside all my issues with the origins and aims of Common Core temporarily, I will address some of the mainstream issues I have with it.
First of all, it does NOT solve the problem. Until the problems with overcrowded classrooms, overmedicated students, and other social issues in schools (Drugs, guns, active shooter drills) are addressed, no matter what curriculum you place in front of children they are not going to be learning or excelling as they should. New textbooks are NOT a fix to this situation.
Denying funding to schools for not adopting a FEDERAL LEVEL teaching curriculum is not only blackmail, it shows the true intent is not to address the issue, but to force the schools into the "program", which only lends itself to conspiracy theories.
Schools adopting common core are forced to upload confidential student data to the educational database, and the dossier includes a lot of information that has no real bearing on student perfomance, such as health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status, and student life goals. Add to this the fact that parents are not even informed of this data collection, but have no access to it, and again we see the basis for more conspiracy theories. Not to mention it's in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA] when information from that database is shared with corporations who donate to (read:buy in)
Common Core is also removing actual reading materials and assignments, and replacing them with government documents, court opinions, and technical manuals. While a certain amount of teaching in understanding how to read these kinds of texts is important, not only is the material bland and hard to keep the students attention on, many of the time honored classics will have to be removed from the curriculum in order to make room for an over-emphasis on documents and charts. Not to mention several of the books on their approved reading lists amount to soft core porn being taught in high schools.
There is an over-emphasis on the testing side of things, the end result being teachers spending most of their time prepping students for tests rather than actual teaching. Entire classrooms are being held back in order to make sure the slower students keep pace. This in turn leads to students not learning actual material, but simply learning to memorize the answers needed to pass the test at the end of the week.
I also think there is an over-emphasis on technology in the classrooms. Students have already shown nationwide that they will figure out a way to bypass the safeguards put in place to keep them from tweeting and facebooking in class, and I find it difficult to believe they need to be taught how to use their iPads for research. Those sort of skills are learned on their own, and the devices serve as a distraction. If allowing them access to outside materials in the classroom is so important, their computers could be linked into a database of educational materials without giving them full access to the internet. Most kids are far more techno-saavy than their teachers or parents, and being kids will exploit internet access to the fullest right under their noses.
Finally, it's severely underfunded, and most school districts, already strapped for cash, are struggling to figure out how to pay for the costs not covered by federal funding. And in this position, they find themselves having difficulty meeting the standards and test scores required to continue to get any federal funding. I'm not saying it was designed to fail, but that's how it's working out.

I hope this shows there are several non-conspiracy based issues with the Common Core program, and that not all that stand against it are frothing at the mouth anti NWO tin foil hat wearing weirdos.

First of all, it does NOT solve the problem. Until the problems with overcrowded classrooms, overmedicated students, and other social issues in schools (Drugs, guns, active shooter drills) are addressed, no matter what curriculum you place in front of children they are not going to be learning or excelling as they should. New textbooks are NOT a fix to this situation.

reply to post by QuantumCypher


Not everything needs to be a knock-down, drag-out fight. I brought all of this up because I saw a lot of people just starting to gather on two sides of a fight. It isn't a fight. It's a discussion about what teachers should do and about how families should advocate for the teaching of their kids. I'm a parent and a publishing person. These aren't abstract, black or white issues to me to be yelled about. I go to work and we make products all day, and my colleagues are parents, and many of them are former teachers. This is my Tuesday and my Wednesday. I know a lot about a lot of this, but not everything, and when we talk about it, it's not some up or down discussion about what side you're on. It's a big set of moving parts. And there is no boogey-man in the closet. We'd know. We'd know waaaay before you knew. It's a little surprising to me to hear people getting so beside themselves about it, which is what made me want to speak up.

I don't want to patronize you, but it sounds like you're reading about this, and you're not there. You're not a parent. Brothers and sisters and nephews don't count. A parent. I want you to sit down with a member of your family who is a parent of a child, and bring up some of these things you're so concerned about with them. And then ask them what they are concerned about when they drop their kids off in the morning. There is school safety, and that's to be worried about. But they'll probably tell you more about the curriculum and the teacher's focus, and who their kid is friends with, and whether their kids' activities are constructive for their development. They'll probably worry about whether they're in a good school district. What is a good school district? That's a very good question to ask them. You'll get a long answer. What do they think makes a good parent? That's a really good question too.

If you ask them about corporate influence on school teaching objectives, you'll probably get a serious opinion that they've researched and considered and discussed with other parents. They might even tell you what I said, which is that that is nonsense and totally beside the point, even if there were any shred of proof for it, or they might have another take. But they'll probably be somewhat relaxed about how they express their opinion, because it's not necessary to get all crazy about what you think when you have a kid and real problems.

Local school districts have final say over whether they're going to buy a book, because it's their budget. They weigh in on the creation of books, and boards of ed are made of parents and teachers who are locally elected by parents. Bill Gates isn't issuing them any directives. They're not idiots. They know a fair book for Western Civ when they see it. There are serious problems, but the problems you identify aren't the ones I've ever encountered.

I regret being so dismissive.

Questions re textbooks. Where are the Common Core textbooks that are not simply rehashed older versions but truly what is needed to teach Common Core? Why have textbook publishers been slow to provide such books?

Yes, in 1980 on the West Coast, 80% of Algebra teachers did not have a Math background (eg. degree in Mathematics). A few years before then, a friend in Alabama started high school being taught by a teacher who had recently graduated from high school herself. No Child Left Behind did require a higher standard for teacher qualification.

Back then, up until NCLB, mandated state accountability testing was done using norm referenced tests, which showed how well a student did compared to peers. You could not "teach to the test", for the result might be similar to the unfortunate time Bart Simpson cheated on a test and was sent to a school for the gifted. NCLB ushered in criterion referenced tests, which showed degree of mastery, so you had damn well better "teach to the test".

(Unfortunately, these NCLB tests promoted another unfortunate incident, this time real. I knew a brilliant science teacher who went from loving teaching and engaging students in learning science to spending time making copies of the publisher resources test practice material and using classtime to "teach" using these packets. Couldn't say I blamed him. His job and his students futures depended on high test scores.)

If Bill Gates had bothered to do a little research on the internet, he would have realized that starting in the late 1970s, potential American science, math and engineering students were going into more lucrative fields such as business, finance, economics, and law (or Bible studies, which is lucrative to only a few but rather culturally relevant). In fact, the financial debacle that caused the Great Recession was helped by mathematical minds employed in the interest of Wall Street.

Face it, unlike the nourishing push for math and science after Sputnik, America has instead employed force via "more rigor" to try to "encourage" STEM students. This has led to unbelievable but true stories such as the $30,000 worth of teaching materials and lessons bought from a company in order to teach Algebra and Geometry to a small class of students with IQs no higher than 60, most way below that. We do this in a country devoid of a culture of math or science for decades. Where too many Americans seem proud of their ignorance of basic math, as if their knowledge would make them "elitist", and science is deemed Godless and junk.

Yes, students will have the hardware (purchased from corporations with tax dollars) to research, but they still need to know how and what to research. Driving a car on a large piece of private property or country road does not mean one knows how to drive on and navigate a freeway system or urban street. Rand Paul's speechwriter sure knew how to go to Wikipedia.

To tell you the truth, I went to a Common Core math workshop a year and a half ago. Turned out that three of the four math lessons presented, I had taught 20 years ago as part of a curriculum! Yes, new technology would engage students in research for one of them. I assumed the young man presenting his great video lessons would have been asked by textbook publishers for input as to how to design a 21st cen digital textbook. Sadly he said no one was interested. We both lamented that textbook publishers might just end up publishing online versions of their hardcopy textbooks.