Wednesday, July 24, 2013

You Can Bet That California Will Be The *Last* State To Jump Ship

Why?  Because this state is run by idiots, that's why:
President Barack Obama’s goal of holding all students across the U.S. to the same high academic standards may be on the verge of unraveling as states take a hard look at the more rigorous tests under development — and balk.

Backed by $360 million in federal grants, some 40-plus states have spent the past three years working with testing companies to develop math and language arts exams tied to the academic standards known as Common Core. They’re minimizing the dreary fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice in favor of more challenging tasks. Kids as young as third grade, for instance, will be asked to write essays synthesizing information from multiple nonfiction texts and to explain their reasoning on math problems.

Yet now that the new tests are almost ready, state officials are complaining that they’re too long and too costly and require too much computer technology. They’re also beginning to push back against the exams as an unwanted federal intrusion on local policy, echoing a groundswell of opposition from tea party critics of Common Core.

Georgia dropped out of the testing collaboration on Monday, saying it would create its own exams instead. Pennsylvania, Alabama, Oklahoma and Utah have already withdrawn. There are strong indications that Florida and Indiana will be next. Other populous states are also teetering. The Michigan Legislature has effectively nixed the new tests by blocking spending on them, though the ban may be revisited next fall. New York is officially undecided but it’s already spending heavily on alternatives. Texas and Virginia never signed on in the first place.

And analysts expect more defections to come.

3 comments:

PeggyU said...

Gaaahhhh ... writing essays to explain their reasoning on math problems. If they don't hate math already, that will do it. What do they think proofs are for??? Now I realize that a proof can take different forms, but really an essay strikes me as likely being unnecessarily cumbersome for the task.

concerned said...

Hi again - I didn't realize you had posted about common core.

I'd appreciate it if you'd give me some feedback, or perhaps a post of your own, on this topic...

http://improvingmathed.blogspot.com/2013/07/yeah-so-what-about-fidelity-to-stem.html

Also, there's **Newly** formed group that your readers may want to check out:
Left-Right Alliance for Education Freedom
http://www.lrallianceforeducation.org/
that Opposes the CCSSI because it continues the failed education reforms of the past and violates privacy rights as it builds a system for centrally managed student training for the future workforce of the “Global Economy.” This central goal will dismantle liberal arts education, which most contributes to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path and sustain a free civilization.

Lisa Jones (aka "concerned")
@proudmomom on twitter

maxutils said...

sigh. :(