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Old 01-06-2015, 09:44 PM
 
Location: I live wherever I am.
1,935 posts, read 4,752,976 times
Reputation: 3317

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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePage View Post
What is the real deal about this common core issue?
For more info,read http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/op...core.html?_r=1
I'll put it to you simply. Common Core sucks because it forces teachers to homogenize education for a heterogeneous population. It makes all of the "holes" round, when the "blocks" may be square, rectangular, triangular, or even of an irregular shape. Round holes only work for round blocks, you know.

Imagine if every student had to eat the exact same meal for lunch. You know there'd be some people who love it, some people who wish they could have something else but would deal with what they got, and some people who would hate it. That's why there are always choices in the lunch line, and the option of bringing your lunch to school if you don't like what is being served in the cafeteria.

The problem with Common Core or any other homogeneous course of education is that not every student learns the same way. I have taught music lessons for almost 12 years now and I've had people who learn in all kinds of different ways. Trying to force one way upon a student who isn't going to learn well that way will produce subpar results and a lot of frustration.

I have tutored some young children in mathematics and I am stunned by what they don't know. They'll show me how they have been taught to do things such as subtract, and though my first thought is to introduce the teacher's face to my knee as soon as I can, approximately 0.02 seconds later it hits me that the people who deserve a few noggin-knockers are the politicians who have foisted Common Core upon all of the teachers who hate it and all of the students who won't benefit from it.

We have gotten to the point where we judge our standing in the world by how many of our students can pass proficiency examinations. America will never be truly great until it stops this and instead focuses education on the basics (most of which can be learned by just about anyone within his/her first ten years of life) and transitions to a focus on the student's individual talents and desires in middle school.

It was starting to become this way even when I was in school. There was very little focus on a student's unique talents and abilities... it was always "you have to have X years of math, and Y years of English, Z years of social studies, etc". In order to get into a program where you had any chance of focusing your education on your strengths and desires for the future, you had to apply and be accepted. If that didn't happen (and it very rarely did - I was one of the few and the fortunate who was accepted into such a program), you had to do the regular track of education and that was almost as homogenized as today's education. (We had the "Early Warning Test" in 8th grade, and a set of proficiency tests we first took in junior year which had to be passed by graduation time or else you wouldn't graduate.)

And even at that, I ended up slipping through the cracks. I attended a special program for the sciences and engineering pursuits, and now I'm a musician. I wonder what would have happened had my educational track been forever altered after that first time I played piano in front of my 4th grade music class and blew them all away.
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Old 01-06-2015, 09:55 PM
 
3,350 posts, read 2,833,480 times
Reputation: 2258
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
Really? None of these are standards, they are merely names of subject areas. So why do we need national standards? What problem are you trying to fix?
Or else you have half the nation who can barely read or do basic math.
Every kid should take Health and Sex Ed not absinence only.
CC math needs to go.
Read levels needs to be improve.
School policies need change.
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Old 01-06-2015, 10:09 PM
 
12,589 posts, read 8,816,051 times
Reputation: 34426
Quote:
Originally Posted by lvoc View Post
So I went back and read the thread again.

I still fail to get it. There seems to be this well known and wide spread resistance to common core but there is never a rationale.

...

Coming from a life time of living off standards and helping develop them I find standards in general a good thing. It is how we keep the technical world bolted together. And when we screw up it makes life very difficult.

...

So what is it specifically that is wrong with common core? And why does the expert base differ so sharply on whether it is any good or not.

...

I find this whole argument incomprehensible. It is as if there is a set of secret publications by the two sides that they share only among themselves.

...
There seems to be plenty of easily understood rationale, so I'm not sure why this is so incomprehensible. So let me try from this perspective.

You come from a life of standards (which ones BTW??) as I do too. Normally the purpose of standards, in the technical world, helps manufacturers, suppliers, owners, and maintainers provide and support the system. These standards derive from a need to fix a known problem, basically the goal of standards supports the need for the market to grow through mutual cooperation.

But we're no longer talking mechanical/electrical devices, but education. The implementation of standards implies it is a solution to a problem that is better than what existed prior to the standards. That's where the problem with CC comes in. No one has been able to define what problem it is trying to fix in anything other than vague "because we need one" terms. That is insufficient reason to change from the current standards to a new one, because there are standards out there. CC advocates just don't like them, but cannot articulate a reason why CC is better.

Which is the next major flaw with the argument for CC. CC proponents have the burden of proving why it is better and why we should spend time and money, and take the risk to change to CC. And it does impose a risk on students that is will cause more problems than it solves. It's just that CC proponents are forcing the burden of proof by claiming opponents need to prove what's wrong with it. The old "prove me wrong" logic fallacy. You can't prove a negative, yet so many people have fallen for it.

Finally, the so called standards really aren't because the implementation is so bad. I understand the appeal of standards but if the standards really were, there wouldn't be so many implementations of them. Take the technical standards world. A 1/4-20 hex head bolt will be the same, within tolerances, regardless of who made it. If every manufacturer made that bolt with a different pitch, head size, etc, then it really wouldn't be a standard no matter how much they may claim so.

So we have:

a. CC is a solution in search of a problem. If the problem can't be defined, how do we know the solution is correct.
b. CC is supported on a logical fallacy of prove it wrong rather than proving it provides the proper ROI and risk balance. CC needs to prove itself right.
c. CC is a standard that isn't one. Too many different implementations result in different standards.
Whitworth bolts anyone?

If it's still incomprehensible, I don't know further what to say.
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Old 01-06-2015, 10:17 PM
 
12,589 posts, read 8,816,051 times
Reputation: 34426
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sommie789 View Post
Or else you have half the nation who can barely read or do basic math.
Every kid should take Health and Sex Ed not absinence only.
CC math needs to go.
Read levels needs to be improve.
School policies need change.
OK, but you do understand that saying the word "math" is not providing a standard don't you? What is the standard and why is that the right standard?

But let's take your sentence "..half the nation who can barely read or do basic math." Let's assume that sentence is correct. How does a standard change that? I can create a standard that says every kid run a 4 minute mile, but that doesn't mean it will happen. So how do you meet the standard?
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Old 01-06-2015, 11:19 PM
 
3,350 posts, read 2,833,480 times
Reputation: 2258
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff View Post
OK, but you do understand that saying the word "math" is not providing a standard don't you? What is the standard and why is that the right standard?

But let's take your sentence "..half the nation who can barely read or do basic math." Let's assume that sentence is correct. How does a standard change that? I can create a standard that says every kid run a 4 minute mile, but that doesn't mean it will happen. So how do you meet the standard?
Not every kids need to pass.
If 50 percent of the eight grader in the nation cannot do basic math such as adding, subtracting , dividing, multiplying and fractions then there is a problem.
It is department of education job to make sure those standards are meet or they work with the school to fix it.
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Old 01-07-2015, 12:45 AM
 
2,638 posts, read 5,997,083 times
Reputation: 2378
I'm against Common Core because it will make you largely ignorant in the workplace.

Let's look at addition. Instead of the convoluted examples given here, I learned addition three ways: bean counting (which was EXTREMELY effective for some reason), money counting (which was also effective) and the old "Johnny's got X apples, finds a tree with Y more, now how many does he have?" type of questions over and over. I was a master of addition long before I realized that it might even harder to do it on a calculator.

The bean counting and the money counting both had similar applications to the "real world". You always count items: counting apples at the supermarket, counting money to pay for something, etc.

A convoluted strategy for doing the same math serves no purpose other than to limit you in how you get to an answer, IMO.
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Old 01-07-2015, 03:38 AM
 
6,439 posts, read 6,866,532 times
Reputation: 8739
I believe in a common core. However, the standards being promoted involve math where wrong answers are considered correct. That's not math. It's lying to our kids to make them feel good for a little while (until they figure out that they've been lied to). It's pretty close to being child abuse.
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Old 01-07-2015, 05:18 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,395,889 times
Reputation: 14692
Quote:
Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy View Post
I'll put it to you simply. Common Core sucks because it forces teachers to homogenize education for a heterogeneous population. It makes all of the "holes" round, when the "blocks" may be square, rectangular, triangular, or even of an irregular shape. Round holes only work for round blocks, you know.

Imagine if every student had to eat the exact same meal for lunch. You know there'd be some people who love it, some people who wish they could have something else but would deal with what they got, and some people who would hate it. That's why there are always choices in the lunch line, and the option of bringing your lunch to school if you don't like what is being served in the cafeteria.

The problem with Common Core or any other homogeneous course of education is that not every student learns the same way. I have taught music lessons for almost 12 years now and I've had people who learn in all kinds of different ways. Trying to force one way upon a student who isn't going to learn well that way will produce subpar results and a lot of frustration.

I have tutored some young children in mathematics and I am stunned by what they don't know. They'll show me how they have been taught to do things such as subtract, and though my first thought is to introduce the teacher's face to my knee as soon as I can, approximately 0.02 seconds later it hits me that the people who deserve a few noggin-knockers are the politicians who have foisted Common Core upon all of the teachers who hate it and all of the students who won't benefit from it.

We have gotten to the point where we judge our standing in the world by how many of our students can pass proficiency examinations. America will never be truly great until it stops this and instead focuses education on the basics (most of which can be learned by just about anyone within his/her first ten years of life) and transitions to a focus on the student's individual talents and desires in middle school.

It was starting to become this way even when I was in school. There was very little focus on a student's unique talents and abilities... it was always "you have to have X years of math, and Y years of English, Z years of social studies, etc". In order to get into a program where you had any chance of focusing your education on your strengths and desires for the future, you had to apply and be accepted. If that didn't happen (and it very rarely did - I was one of the few and the fortunate who was accepted into such a program), you had to do the regular track of education and that was almost as homogenized as today's education. (We had the "Early Warning Test" in 8th grade, and a set of proficiency tests we first took in junior year which had to be passed by graduation time or else you wouldn't graduate.)

And even at that, I ended up slipping through the cracks. I attended a special program for the sciences and engineering pursuits, and now I'm a musician. I wonder what would have happened had my educational track been forever altered after that first time I played piano in front of my 4th grade music class and blew them all away.
See Bolded text. Actually this is NOT the problem with common core. Common core doesn't tell the teacher which methods to use to teach. It only tells the teacher WHAT to teach. The teacher decides how the students best learn. What's wrong with common core is a lack of depth and a failure to hold students accountable for learning what we teach. As long as they have no vested interest in learning the material, we're pushing a rope. Yes some kids want to learn and will learn but if there's not something on the line for others they're not going to bother no matter what methods the teacher uses.

And common core doesn't tell states which classes students take. Just what material is to be taught in those classes. It's a good idea but it's being implemented poorly because those who write the standards don't seem to know what depth is. I posted earlier that I believe they have cut depth from the chemistry standards. IMO the depth is where I ask my students to use their brains. I need to teach a lot of stuff before we get there. When you start cutting that stuff out, I can't get there.

And a common core with exit exams would leave plenty of flexibility for teachers because you would look at the aggregate scores. It's not like the tests would be graded on a set scale. It would be handled similar to the ACT.
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Old 01-07-2015, 08:56 AM
 
Location: The Triad
34,091 posts, read 82,455,924 times
Reputation: 43647
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sommie789 View Post
Not every kids need to pass.
Yeah... they do. The question is WHAT they need to pass.
And how that requirement compares to what other kids are doing.

As for the kids who genuinely CAN'T pass...
don't commingle those social welfare needs with the role of the public schools.
Quote:
If 50 percent of the eight grader in the nation cannot do basic (arithmetic)...
Then it is ONLY because their earlier inability to do basic arithmetic was ignored.

Quote:
It is department of education job to make sure those standards are meet
or they work with the school to fix it.
I'm a big fan of education standards and a Federalist to boot...
but w/r/t elementary education especially the problems you're describing are family level.

No program can make up for the lap time with Mom/Dad reading and learning numbers.
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Old 01-07-2015, 09:13 AM
 
3,350 posts, read 2,833,480 times
Reputation: 2258
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post
Yeah... they do. The question is WHAT they need to pass.
And how that requirement compares to what other kids are doing.

As for the kids who genuinely CAN'T pass...
don't commingle those social welfare needs with the role of the public schools.

Then it is ONLY because their earlier inability to do basic arithmetic was ignored.


I'm a big fan of education standards and a Federalist to boot...
but w/r/t elementary education especially the problems you're describing are family level.

No program can make up for the lap time with Mom/Dad reading and learning numbers.
Some parents do not care or too busy.
Some kids do not care enough.
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