This NY Times article about the "bipartisan support"for the Common Core does nothing to alleviate those suspicions:
A bipartisan group of educators and business and labor leaders plan to announce on Monday their support for a common curriculum that states could adopt for public schools across the nation.
...
Signers include Randi Weingarten, president of the federation, and prominent Democrats, including Richard W. Riley, secretary of education under President Bill Clinton.
Several Republicans also signed, including former Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey; Chester E. Finn Jr., an assistant secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan; and Susan B. Neuman, an assistant secretary of education under President George W. Bush.
Last year’s common-standards effort began as an initiative of the National Governors Association. The Obama administration endorsed it, and many states adopted the standards quickly because doing so conferred an advantage in the White House’s $4 billion Race to the Top grant competition. The administration is now financing the development of tests aligned with the common standards.
Many corporate executives concerned about the nation’s competitiveness endorsed the standards movement and are likely to support a common curriculum, several signers of the new statement said.
“There were a number of Republicans who agreed to the common standards,” Mr. Kean said, “and this is the next logical step beyond that.”
Ah, yes now we get to the reason the Obama administration and the "bipartisan" business leaders, union leaders who act like business leaders and corporate pols like Kean want the Common Core standards the law of the land - so that there can be federal tests.
But dig into the article and you find that the support for the Common Core is NOT so bipartisan:
A number of prominent Republicans, including Representative John Kline of Minnesota, chairman of the House Education Committee, believe in local control, are suspicious of the standards movement and seem likely to oppose the common-curriculum proposal.
“The administration went from encouraging states to carry out common standards to funding the creation of the tests,” Mr. Kline said in a recent interview. “I and my colleagues object vehemently. We do not want to politicize the curriculum.”
Since there are so many business leaders in on the Common Core scam, let's see how far the House Republican objections go.
But I agree with Kline.
We ALL ought to be suspicious of a movement that federalizes the curriculum and assessments.
One last thing: I don't remember Obama running on federalizing the curriculum and the testing.
Guess this was more of his secretive Change We Can Believe In.
So, on any given morning, say every 6th grade math class in this nation, thousands of them, will be taught an identical lesson over the Internet by ONE teacher, working in Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteYou know, you have to take care of your shareholders.
All other countries have a common core. This looks to be inevitable. But in the USA you can trust the for-profit test software and textbook companies to screw it up -- for example to have it be designed by neo-liberal ideologues and business people instead of academic experts in the various fields of knowledge and the arts to be covered.
ReplyDeleteMore here:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.coreknowledge.org/2011/03/07/a-curriculum-manifesto/
It's the curriculum (+ mastery learning):
ReplyDeleteHere is a letter from a Russian immigrant (by the way, Singapore Math used to be Soviet Math). She says we already know what works, why not use it:
http://underzodiacclock.com/2010/10/05/american-education-reform/
Currently each state has an option of "creating their own test" based on the state standards. The testing companies vying for the sweet contract to actually write, administer, and score the tests have to compete in each state.
ReplyDeleteWith Common Core, there would be one test for all states. That reduces the testing company's expenses, but will keep the costs per state the same. It is an issue of increasing profits for test writing companies.
In addition to the observation of the companies providing the textbooks to prepare for the test is also suspicious insofar as what the government chooses to indoctrinate our children with.
Crap Detector should really be on full power on this one.