Now the Sec of Education claims that the Feds aren’t trying to influence the Common Core development. They claim it is a state driven thing, but we know better, don’t we? The carrot is money, the states always sit up for money.
Below is an essay from National Review on the lying and deceivin’ going on at the Department of Education in regards to Common Core.
The claim is that CC is a benign state and private sector funded and developed program to revise and strengthen the curriculum in primary and secondary schools.
You might recall we are now at the 30 year mark on the report of the failures of our School Systems–the report was “A Nation at Risk” and it said that our worst enemies could not be as successful as we have been in destroying the society through dumbing down the citizenry with incompetent education.
We did quite well just following the advice of John Dewey and the Columbia School of education and along the way discarding phonics, memorization, real math, history literature, great books and thinkers, in favor of socialist pablum and joint projects, avoiding any taint of competition or any risk of failure for lack of effort.
Self esteem became, in the past 4 decades, the excuse of inflated grades at all levels and a less literate or numerate student body.
http://neatoday.org/2013/04/25/a-nation-at-risk-turns-30-where-did-it-take-us/
Of Course the report was released in 1983 and in the early 90s we had Goals 2000, which was bound to make things right and spend some money for the kids.
Clinton signed Goals 2000 into law with the usual carrot of funding in 1994 of hundreds of millions, chicken feed compared to more recent ambitious programs.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Goals_2000?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
the goals of Goals 2000 were:
By the Year 2000…
All children in America will start school ready to learn.
The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.
All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, the arts, history, and geography, and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our nation’s modern economy.
United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.
Every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Every school in the United States will be free of drugs, violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and alcohol and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.
The nation’s teaching force will have access to programs for the continued improvement of their professional skills and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct and prepare all American students for the next century.
Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children.
Well those goals of Goals 2000 were not met, not even close, in fact the schools by 2000 were worse, not better.
W proposed the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which was his proof he cared, presaging his Medicare part D generosity and statist commitment and he also got to do something to make his favorite schoolmarm, Laura happy.
Goals 2000 were not met and NCLB has a poor record so let’s do Race to the Top. 4 Billion is the carrot this time.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Race_to_the_Top?o=2800&qsrc=999
And lets make Race to the Top and Common Core a combined project.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/367085/print
Doesn’t all this utopian scheming just make you happy? And optimistic?
It’s always about the money and boy do we like to spend money on kids–and schools.
A Conservative state like Texas was recently reported as having the second highest property tax rates in the nation–because of school taxes. Imagine that.
So these programs always need another better program to distract from the failure of the previous one.
E D Hirsch had it right and others, who say content and competence cannot be separated. He is retired now from his position as University Professor at UVA but he created a traditional approach to pedagogy that has substance.
All these grand ideas described above the issue from the Federal Gov Elites are like miniatures of Obamacare–central planning doesn’t work well, particularly when poisoned with socialism (is that a tautology?).
All this ambitious educational meddling by the feds would make John Dewey proud–you know,the John Dewey that liked socialism, thought education should be a social and not content or skill oriented experience.
Dewey abhored memorization and content and spoke from tower at the Columbia School of education, and he got his wish–kids are dumb and dumber, half of college entrants are deficient on readin’ and writin’ and rithmatic and can’t do science or history cause that requires knowing something.
They have i phones that do their multiplication and sometimes correct their writing, and we have high schoolers who can’t hand write a letter note, can’t make change, don’t know how to concentrate and learn things? How much money to fix that?
and a commitment to socialism/utopianism. These people are True Believers. School teachers are like sheep.
John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)
thanks for that comment rich, and recall that einstein and feynman both said that one guy with an experiment can nullify the most exquisite and attractive theory.
John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)
One of the inconvenient truisms of life is that with a large budget you can afford to hire anybody but anybody is usually not too good. On a small budget you cannot afford to hire anybody so you will be careful to hire somebody and somebody is usually more competent than anybody.
The problem with Public Education is not lack of funding or bad families. It is a century of unlimited power, no accountability and virtually no competition.
I saw this creeping in when I was in high school in the early 60’s with ‘Team Teaching’, the New Math, and other ‘progressive education’ measures designed to conceal the incompetence of the teachers. Fortunately I had learned to read, write, and do arithmetic before I entered school in the 1st grade (there was no Kindergarten in public schools then). Furthermore I was ‘mentored’ by a German polymath – he was able to teach mathematics, physics, and German at the High School level – who made sure I learned calculus before completing the 11th grade.
In turn I made sure my own children were able to read, write, and count *before* they started in public schools. They still come to me for history lessons.
My kids were getting math in high school that I was getting in the 7th and 8th grade. One of my kid’s teachers told me that the 7th grade was when they retaught all the math from the previous 6 grades to make sure they could do arithmetic. The did something called Chicago Math where the process was more important than the correct answer. Old knuckledragger that I am, I kept saying memorization of basics and the correct answer to 1+1 was the important part. I’ve found clerks who can’t make change.
My father dropped out of school in the 8th grade in about 1927. His reading and math skills from a little country school were better than many of today’s high school graduates.