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blackturtle.us: Thanks for affirming statements I made in an earlier post and providing documentation for assertions I made earlier. I've been out of teaching long enough to have fallen behind current trends and new assessment tools and all the other stuff that teachers have to constantly deal with, but I have general knowledge of what Common Core is and what it isn't. Unfortunately, the general public has a lot of misconceptions about Common Core and many things they complain about have nothing to do with Common Core itself.

More like COMMON SNORE if you ask me. I know... I know... no one's asking me.

Calif. Parents Get First Look Of How Children Fared On State’s New Standardized Test
It's the first test of its kind and so there's nothing to compare it to. The scores sound low, but if it's a tougher test, then obviously the tests are going to be low. Not seeing the big deal here.

IMHO people shouldn't take standardized test scores too seriously. Their best use is simply to determine which students should progress to the next grade level and which ones should ultimately graduate. Test scores tell us a lot about students, but they don't tell us much about an educational system. Students should be held accountable and educators should be provided with the resources they need to do a good job.

wildrose: I couldn't agree more. Students are very difficult to motivate nowadays. Instead of allowing students to get back at teachers with bad test scores, students should be the ones who are judged by their scores. Enabling destructive behavior is what our society does best and we've created many situations which undermine societal improvement in some misguided attempt to be progressive.

Bill and Melinda Gates on the political debate over Common Core standards
The main thing to keep in mind is that Common Core is not a revolutionary change. It's basically just a standardization of curriculum that has existed for decades. The main advantage is that students who move from one state to another can experience continuity in their educational experience. In the past some states have been up to two years apart in terms of the sequence of concepts and skills being taught in the classroom. Imagine what that's like for a student who has to move several times during his or her K-12 experience.

Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections
It's all about making money. Reform isn't designed to improve education, but to force schools to buy stuff which implements the supposed reform. As for the state of education, if you look at the most relevant statistics, then schools are doing their job quite well. However, the corporately controlled media ignores all that and focuses almost exclusively on any piece of information that could be used to bash schools because if there's a problem then it needs to be fixed and fixing the problem means more money for corporations selling over-priced products to schools. Like I said, it's all about making money.

U.S. education reform isn't so much a "Race to the Top," because no matter which schools climb to the top of the ladder first, corporations always win.

LINK: http://www.alternet.org/education/flow-chart-exposes-common-cores-myriad-corporate-connections

pcslim: I think you're right. It's all just a way to scam the Amerian people for more money. Greedy corporations and corrupt government working together can't be up to anything good. It's all a farce as far as having any positive impact on public education. I think that's the last thing corporations or the government really care about!

Recently I did a little research on Common Core and I discovered two things. First, Common Core is a very good thing. Standardizing the curriculum across the nation is a good thing and the standards contained in Common Core are perfectly reasonable. Nothing weird or unusual about any of it. However, there is a huge BUT. The standardized tests that go with Common Core are awful. Some states use something called PARCC and other states use something called Smarter Balance. Neither test is a good interpretation of Common Core. They are both just a mess and the idiots that developed them should be publicly shamed for wasting public money and wasting the time of students and teachers across the nation.

Communism, socialism and common core on paper, in the book all seem to be good ideas.