Common Core is a liberal indoctrination scheme designed to prepare those students who make it for success in liberal universities.
It is not designed to have them successful in life.
Basic skills take a back seat to so-called “critical thinking”
If you can discuss the need for a bridge that’s better than knowing the math behind the bridge.
My wife, a kindergarten teacher hates it.
Mandatory Common Core tests in New York just happen to be full of corporate brand names
Across the state of New York, this year’s Common Core English tests have reportedly featured a slew of brand-name products including iPod, Barbie, Mug Root Beer and Life Savers. For Nike, the tests even conveniently included the shoe company’s ubiquitous slogan: “Just Do It.”
The brands – and apparently even some of their familiar trademark symbols – appeared in tests questions for students ranging from third to eighth grades, reports The Post-Standard of Syracuse.
Over one million students were required to take the tests.
Parents, teachers and school administrators have speculated that the kid-friendly brand names are a new form of product placement.
Education materials behemoth Pearson, which has a $32 million five-year contract to develop New York’s Common Core-related tests, has barred teachers and school officials from disclosing the contents of the tests.
Students and parents are not so barred, though, and many have complained.
“‘Why are they trying to sell me something during the test?’” Long Island mother Deborah Poppe quoted her son as saying, according to Fox News. “He’s bright enough to realize that it was almost like a commercial.”
Poppe said her eighth-grade son was talking about a question about a busboy who didn’t clean up a root beer spill. It wasn’t just any root beer, though. No sir! It was Mug Root Beer, a registered trademark of PepsiCo (current market cap: $129.7 billion).
Another question about the value of taking risks featured the now-hackneyed Nike slogan “Just Do It.”
“I’m sure they could have used a historical figure who took risks and invented things,” observed displeased dad Sam Pirozzolo, also of Staten Island, according to the Daily Mail. “I’m sure they could have found something other than Nike to express their point.”
Pirozzolo has a child in fifth grade.
Nike, one of America’s best known and most heavily advertised companies, boasts a current market cap of $65.01 billion.
A number of baffled and angry New York teachers have anonymously complained about the branding and much else on blogs and websites. (RELATED: Think Common Core class material is bad? Check out the unbelievably AWFUL standardized tests)
Representatives from the New York State Education Department have flatly denied involvement in any novel marketing agreements.
“There are no product placement deals between us, Pearson or anyone else,” Tom Dunn, an Education Department spokesman, told Fox News. “No deals. No money. We use authentic texts. If the author chose to use a brand name in the original, we don’t edit.”
To the credit of Pearson and the named ccompanies, it does seem like an unusually stupid move—even for greedy brand managers.
“If any brand did try to place there, what they would lose from the outrage would surely trump any exposure they got,” Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a marketing professor at Golden Gate University, told Fox.
At the same, some people are perfectly happy about idea of mixing for-profit merchandising and mandatory Common Core tests.
“Brands are part of our lives,” Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York brand consulting firm Landor Associates, told Fox. “To say they don’t belong in academia is unrealistic.”
There are no testing standards associated with the history, founding or culture of this nation.
We have quit trying to teach our children how we are suppose to govern ourselves. I think most Seniors in high school have to take at least one semester of “government”. Otherwise there are some social studies classes through our educational system but only as an afterthought to math and science (which we are also failing to teach apparently).
And we wonder why our voting public is so ignorant.
It's long past time federal agencies be reminded they are "creatures of Congress," and not mandated by the pen or phone of Obama.
Better yet, the Department of Education should, of course, be eliminated.
Any one of us could, of course, go on and on, tracing the nightmare back to John Dewey, and earlier. Regardless, here we are, in same place our public schools have been for decades, existing more for the sake of public employees, apparently, than for the students, the end of all orthodox institutions, like toll roads that collect money to pay for the maintenance of the toll booths.
The amount spent on Remedial Education at state-funded colleges is measured in the billions. Why does any student graduate from secondary schooling in need of remedial education? Why can't aren't they taught how to balance a checkbook?
Common Core programs the kids to be slaves for Big Government. That PSA on TV with the three lardass "teachers" praising Common Core really pisses me off.
It’s too bad Reagan never got around to eliminating the Dept. Of Education.
Common Core = HARD CORE!!
Research shows Strategies that work in science, math by Rhonda Rosenberg | April 17, 2014 New York Teacher
New research examining the impact of different classroom instructional practices on student achievement in math and science found that learning gains were greatest in math when calculators, computers and other technology were integrated in the class and in science when the student completed a science experiment or project in class. The second most effective practice in both subjects was the traditional classroom approach where the teacher lectures and the students listen and take notes. Also effective was having students work together in groups to solve math or science problems. [also called LAB? -- my own take]
The study, published in the American Journal of Education, used standardized math and science test score data from middle school students in North Carolina. Included on North Carolina’s tests are survey questions that ask students about the kind of instructional activities they encountered in their classrooms, which allowed researchers Michael Hansen and Thomas Gonzalez, both of the American Institutes for Research, to look for correlations.
The researchers found that less effective practices in math included having students explain their answers in class; read about math; and talk about how math is used in other subjects. For science, the less effective practices were having students read about science or complete a science project outside the classroom. [i.e., COMMIE CORE CRAP] These results held for students of all income levels and all races and ethnicities.
The researchers recommended that educators try to integrate the most effective instructional practices in their classrooms. They also noted that some of the practices that did not appear to help raise test scores could nevertheless be useful in stimulating student interest in math and science.