That's one thing that I think has to be moved local. If you want to give a teacher a raise because they're doing a kick ass job I'm all for it, but I want the people who work with the teachers to decide that, not this standardized testing bullshit. I'm not against a common core either, but the one we have is really bad and if it comes down to keeping it or eliminating it I'm in favor of the latter. The standardized testing is a major issue to me, but the worst thing to happen to American education is the regression of liberal arts. That's one of the best areas for pushing independent thought and critical thinking. Instead we're getting blowhard ideologues and cult shaming of dissension and it has to fucking stop.
Implementation could always be better. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers are/were unprepared for it as well. Do you want to know how much training I received for how to design and implement curriculum based on the new standards? Essentially nil. But you seem to be making broad generalizations based on viral anecdotes. There are a lot of teachers who use the standards appropriately and effectively. Ultimately will common core be the silver bullet that solves education's woes? Certainly not, but it was a good step in the right direction that is in danger of being torn up. And as for kids getting it wrong for not solving the problem in a correct way, that's been true of education since...forever? That's not a new phenomenon in the slightest. Should teachers stop that? Sure. Will they? No. I don't disagree, but like you say the current standardized testing is a shit way to do that. I have yet to see an effective way of determining a teacher's merit. We know some are better than others, but how do you formalize that in a fair and equitable way? No idea. I don't think there is really an effective way to do this either unfortunately. It would end up being a popularity contest as much as anything. It wouldn't be about what is best for the students at all. How is the current one bad? I'm not sure what you're taking aim at.
To a point, but so are most corporate promotions. I think it's preferable to handing them out based on a blind disregard for the class location or how the teacher is performing in anything else other than teaching kids which bubble to circle (not that the test results are meaningless). There's no intangibles to it either, like working with kids who have difficult home/personal lives or getting the classroom engaged. You could also do a pay scale based on tenor, but there's serious limits in that evaluation as well. Maybe just let the unions decide it. Like, here's how much money we allocate to salary, how do you want it allocated? Pretty much for the reasons I wrote in the election thread.
Yeah, I'm not sure how the common core's focus is not on critical thinking skills. That's basically the entire purpose of the standards. This is especially true in comparison to the old standards adopted by many states. Many states had standards that were not remotely preparing their students for life after high school. Like you said, think Mississippi vs New York. So I think you're conflating some issues here. The common core standards outline what students are supposed to do. Here is an example from the grade 11-12 reading standards: Obviously that requires critical thinking about a text. So when you're talking about replacing common core, you're talking about replacing things like the above. Some states have done so, and states aren't required by federal law to adopt the common core standards. It just requires that states adopt challenging standards. Indiana had a big flap about the Common Core standards and they repealed them to write their own. Here is the first grade 11-12 reading standard: No, I didn't misquote that. Most of the criticisms about the common core aren't about what the standards actually say; it's about branding. The standards themselves are decent. Now, if you're talking about standardized testing, you are talking about the Every Student Succeeds Act which is recent and requires the following in regard to testing: There would be testing no matter what standards there were. It's a separate issue from the common core.
I'm curious what you think of Finland's education system, which is radically different and hugely successful. They use standardized testing to evaluate whether common cores goals are met, so yes, it's certainly related. Policy makers have been comparing the two for as long as common core has existed. My issue with common core is that it lacks emphasis on breaking down complex problems and narrows the scope of curriculum. It leads to a lot of rote memorization that has little real world application. Much of the information is forgotten, and then you have students who don't know how to apply principles and theory. The emphasis on factoids rather than application is why I see it as resulting in the cobra effect and US education declines the harder common core is pushed. That's a simplistic explanation, and I don't think analysis is non-existent in our education system, but it speaks to the problem. Maybe you're right in that some of the standards are good, but our approach is misguided. I'm sorry, I can't believe that the failures in our education system are merely about branding. This is separate from the K-12 education system, but it makes me think of when I earned my degree in college. There were a number of classes you could ace without learning jack shit because there was such an emphasis on multiple choice testing. You just cram the night before and you didn't even need to show up for class most of the time. The good professors didn't do that, but it's kind of shameful that we pay so much to attend a university and some of the professors are that fucking lazy.
I should say too there is a lot of fluctuation in people's education experiences. I look at common core and that's my opinion on it, and I've seen the government fuck up so many things through their pushes for standardization and ever increasing goal/benchmark objectives. I like the idea of legislators giving teachers what they need to do their jobs and then being more hands off.
I'm not that familiar with them on the whole. Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of using them to be our panacea because it almost all sounds too good to be true. That's not what I said. I said that much of the criticism about the common core is about branding. Indiana repealing the common core and then replacing it with identical reading standards is an indicator of that. I'm honestly having trouble following what you're saying here. To be clear, what I can directly speak to are the ELA standards 9-12. But what you're saying doesn't jive with what other teachers have told me or I have read on any level. You're basically repeating criticisms about old standards and applying to them to the common core. The common core standards were met with hostility for meany reasons Common core doesn't narrow the scope of curriculum moreso than any other set of standards would. With it's emphasis on nonfiction it actually increased the scope of most school's curriculum. Beyond that it doesn't prescribe curriculum at all. School districts set their own curriculum like they always have. In fact, there is more freedom than ever in regard to curriculum with the inclusion of explicit inclusion of nonfiction. And remember these standards are supposed to be the floor, not the ceiling. As far as breaking down complex problems, that would be contained in the heavy emphasis on argumentation. Where students are asked to do things like: With a substandard of that being: The common core explicitly de-emphasizes factoids and memorization in favor of the application of skills and understanding. Have you ever seen or taken a common core aligned state test? There are no "factoids" you can teach a student to pass them ahead of time. The test is not going to ask who wrote the play Romeo and Juliet or how many people signed the Declaration of Independence. Here is an example of one from a company that some states are using at the 11th grade level.
You're right, I had a lot of stuff in my mind that relates to my educational experience, which isn't modern. But yes, they shape curriculum, don't they? http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/8/introduction/ Looking at the standards in other subjects it's full of meaningless shit. I do really like this stuff though: So yeah, maybe I'm bitching about implementation and my own educational experiences, and my general distrust of legislators guiding teachers too thoroughly. How much have the educational problems you've seen come down to funding? If you're luke warm on Finland, their results do speak for themselves. Whether it would work as well here is another debate.
Yeah, I don't question that it's working for them at all. I just don't know how we would fair trying to do it. I'm honestly not sure. Money money could help in a lot of ways, but making sure it is spent in the right way is very hard. Stupid example, my school bought every teacher in the district an ipad at like $600 a pop. Great....except most teachers never turned them on or just took them home for their own kids to use them. With that same money I could have bought 50 chromebooks for students to use every day.
Finally some good news: Sabrina Erdely and Rolling Stone have been found responsible of defaming UVA with malice. Fucking pond scum.
I wonder what kind of punitive damages will be applied. I'd be interested to see if they get gawkered.
I fucking hope so. There is not a lower form of liar in existence than Coakley and Ederly. Lying, evil, vile snakes.
Fantastic. Terrorist threat election eve, intelligence suggests Texas is a possible target. Al Qaeda shit. News is saying carry on about your daily lives as usual, but I will be double checking my handgun to make sure there is one in the chamber.
Is anyone else getting annoying text messages along the lines of "Hi, I'm so and so and I'm with Hillary! Blah, blah, blah, vote Democrat."? I've gotten four of them. It's like they're trying to piss me off.
I just got another one. I do not love it, I do not like it, it's just pissing me off. I can deal with pop ups on the internet, that's to be expected, but spamming my phone is not going to make me like you or your stupid fucking message.
I got phone calls too. For me it's a reminder that privacy is a dying concept and they're spying on all of us. I'm registered as a democrat and I've talked everywhere about voting for Trump. Maybe that's why they're spamming me like crazy. I'm in a swing state (Florida) and fit into some kind of fence demographic. The Hillary supporters that are proud of it because "ooo look she's so on her game" are fucking pissing me off. Some of my friends thought some defunct government twitter account that started back up out of the blue posting "VOOOOOTE DONALD" was Russia hacking our government because they're in bed with Putin. I know little about it, but wouldn't be surprised if it's Hillary trying to play up the conspiracy theory. Who the fuck knows anything with this government anymore though.
Looks like Trump has his own scheme to keep dumbasses from going to the booth. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-ads-tell-clinton-supporters-to-do-just-that/ Sigh.
Whatever this Twitter account thing is sounds really silly of them, but I like how the USIC/DHS-backed idea that Russia is trying to meddle with the election is the conspiracy theory, but "I'm getting voter outreach calls because Hillary's campaign is spying on me and knows I'm voting for Trump, not because I'm a registered Democrat in a swing state" and "I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary's campaign hacked a government Twitter account and tweeted a bunch of pro-Trump stuff in order to somehow make it look like the Russians hacked it instead" are not.