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Education Secretary Arne Duncan told an audience of state superintendents this afternoon that the Education Department and other Common Core supporters didn’t fully anticipate the effect the standards would have once implemented.
“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said. “You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”
Overcoming that will require communicating to parents that competition is now global, not local, he said.
This comment has created a surge in the pushback against the school reform movement, including a new Facebook group dedicated to getting Duncan out of office.
Well Arne, you told us about White suburban moms but didn't tell us about Black inner city moms ?
Are they thrilled with Common Core or do they feel the same way as White suburban moms ?
At least play your socioeconomic card all the way.
Well in that case, let's just take all the suburban white kids out of public schools! Clearly, they are the problem with education today- standardized test scores would skyrocket without them!
I remain far more concerned about the other 70%...
than the 30% for whom any one specific latest and greatest scheme can be absorbed and moved on from.
Computing the per diem for a given trip is beyond the capacity of 29 percent — almost three in 10 — American adults. They cannot apply two steps to calculate with whole numbers and common decimals, percentages and fractions or perform other simple tasks with numbers. Only adults in Spain and Italy did worse than Americansin such skills.
The dismal figures come from a survey of adult skills in 24 countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Ominously, Americans ages 55 to 65 perform around the average of the other countries, but young Americans rank the lowest among their peers. We already have a higher dropout rate than other countries, especially among minority groups who are a growing share of our students.
The OECD survey shows that American math education, in particular, desperately needs to improve. Math skills don't need to get very sophisticated to make us competitive. "Read a bar chart and add up the percentage of men who had more than 6 years of schooling," the survey asked. No more than two in 10 Japanese, Finns, or Swedes can rise to that challenge; unfortunately, among American adults only about one in 10 can.
their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were
He's basically saying, "The problem isn't CC, it's these spoiled suburbanite mothers who want to falsely believe that their kids are brighter than they are." CC is dismal failure, specifically, in mathematics. But far be it for Duncan to admit that. It's everyone else's fault.
Quote:
The OECD survey shows that American math education, in particular, desperately needs to improve.
I would probably word this a little differently. American math education was fine. The problem in mathematics has been primarily linked to socioeconomic levels. The reasons for that are legion, but that discussion is better left for another thread.
He's basically saying, "The problem isn't CC, it's these spoiled suburbanite mothers who want to falsely believe that their kids are brighter than they are." CC is dismal failure, specifically, in mathematics. But far be it for Duncan to admit that. It's everyone else's fault.
It's quite possible that the whole idea is to make these suburban parents uncomfortable enough to warm to the idea of the charter school model. The reality is that students from Americans suburban families have "competed" quite well with students from other countries with similar poverty rates.
Why is it that we recognize the fact that if we don't use our bodies we lose strength and flexibility but don't make the same connection with the failure to use our brain? Children are no longer required to memorize anything. The assumption is that they can "look it up" or use a machine to find the answer. True. However, equally true is that memorization exercises the brain and helps connect the pathways needed to help it work at the top of its potential.
Improvement may (should?) also include returning to what was known to work.
By was fine, I meant before Common Core. I'm not sure what your background is - I'm not trying to be condescending, but CC are the new federal standards that have hoisted onto the schools. The sequence in mathematics is harmful. The sequence prior to CC, although not official, was fairly consistent across the nation. What needed to be changed was completely different than what was changed. And, you know, once the feds get a hold of something, they never let it go.
It's quite possible that the whole idea is to make these suburban parents uncomfortable enough to warm to the idea of the charter school model. The reality is that students from Americans suburban families have "competed" quite well with students from other countries with similar poverty rates.
I'm not much into conspiracy theories, but what they've done is so unbelievably bad, it's hard to think that wasn't by design.
And you are right our non FRL students have, as a group, competed quite well with other top performing countries. Many of those "top" performing countries vet out their worst performers for international testing.
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