Well, we know how that community organizing works out mathematically.
The Federal government has NO business meddling in K-12.
NONE.
This will be interesting to watch.
Intel is the only real tech company in Oregon and their employees really value education in the sciences and math.
To them, it is impossible to over educate.
Hopefully they will start to wake up.
The way they teach math in public school is crap. The system wasn’t broke but they had to “fix” it and make it a pos.
Just a few short years ago we had math geniuses that built the bomb, put men on the moon, built dams and bridges still standing, the skunk works, refined the computer... now we have web designers and social media designers.
The District here just announced they will no longer teach cursive writing.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130429114020/http://mathematicallycorrect.com/
This is a great website to learn about the Math Wars. Details the philosophy of ‘educational’ math and real math. Excellent resource that includes reviews of various elementary and high school curriculum.
Ping!
If you would like more information about Oregon, please FReepmail me. I lost my Oregon list when my computer crashed last month.
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It is very likely that these teacher ( who are making kids "look much deeper" into mathematics) would FAIL the GED math section!
It would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic to hear administrators explain to Special Education teachers how this is going to work with moderate to severe autistic students--feelings over facts...
Common Core is a model of everything socialized. Don’t make the worst better; make the better worse, hopefully by destroying it.
What the eggheads who come up with this crap fail to realize...is that for every kid who is baffled and intimidated by math; there are plenty who acquire great satisfaction and confidence and speed by completing many many drills. Yeah, it’s a little tedious....but the feeling of being able to CRUSH math problems is a thing that can be self generated if the student is motivated...and that motivation can be cultivated. And this is not to say that some kids will never acquire great math skills. But there is the opportunity to allow some to acquire a lot of confidence. Of course that would be a tragedy because they might go bully “lesser” intellects.
The best instructor I had in math in college was an engineer.
He cut through so much theory, took shortcuts, made math intelligable and every single person in that class got it.
After I moved on to other employment the math educators changed the way, even the math vocabulary, every few years. I doubt seriously that I could teach math in today's schools.
My child’s school is teaching islam and the teacher recited the shahadah. He said you can say it without really becoming a muslim. ( my feeling is that he was trying to get the children to say it.) My daughter and other students knew well enough not to say it. This is being taught to middle school kids.
“A KATU News reporter tried to ask Petrick whether the Common Core standards were the best thing if nine families had pulled their kids out of class because their kids were so stressed and distraught, but the Hillsboro School District spokeswoman cut Petrick off before he could answer.
“You don’t have to answer that, Rian. That’s an aggressive question,” the spokeswoman said.”
Principal Petrick doesn’t have to answer “aggressive questions.” That’s a good one.
Why bother taking your kid out of one class? Just pull him out altogether.
The recipe for Common Core math: throw process and rigor out the window, center the curriculum around multiculturalism and inclusivity, foster an environment of unfocused discovery where each child invents mathematics from the ground up. Disaster.
1. They are pretty much owned by the NEA, the largest union in the United States. As a union, they pretty much want complete control over all aspects of whatever the business is they are a part of. Because of this, trying to get any sort of reform is a non-starter because they will claim that it isn't the schools' fault that kids aren't doing well because if it was the schools' fault then the blame would land right on their doorstep. Unions want all the benefits they can get but want to shoulder none of the blame. They are always blaming something else:Because of these three things, those controlling the public schools are riding a gravy train:•We don't have enough money for our schools.Also because of this, there is no room for innovation or competition. If a public school or even a teacher within a public school is allowed to experiment to see what really does or does not work in either a very low level criterion of, say, getting the kids to be enthusiastic readers or a very high level criterion of being able to analyze an argument, even one from the teacher, point out the bullsh_t, and then eviscerate the opponent by use of a deadly application of logic and sarcasm, then it will be evident that, by comparison, everything else that is controlled by the union from textbook writing, textbook purchases, classroom size, curriculum development, curriculum implementation, curriculum specialists, etc., is pretty much bullshit and their sinecure will be at an end.
•We don't get paid enough to attract the best and brightest (considering what teachers have to put up with in dealing with the deadwood of administrators, there is no amount of money large enough to convince the best and brightest to put up with that kind of crap unless they are, at heart, masochists-- you know, those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, administrate or become guidance counselors).
•We don't have a large enough portion of the day to counteract all the negative influences the children experience at home or on the streets.
•The parents are not doing what they are supposed to do to prepare children for school.
•Kids don't get enough sleep.
•Kids speak a different language at home.
•Kids can't learn effectively because of racism.
•Kids can't learn effectively because of sexism.
•Kids can't learn effectively because of homophobia.
•Kids come to school hungry and cannot concentrate and benefit from our curriculum.
•Kids are hyperactive or attention deficit disordered (usually means that the tedium and bullsh_t of the class is just too much for some kids who then find other ways to amuse themselves).
•Kids have so many electronic playthings at home that they cannot concentrate on traditional learning methods (meaning, "Hey, let's buy billions of dollars of electronic equipment for the class and hire veritable sh_tloads of specialists to figure out how to use them, dream up innovative new software to use on them, teach the teachers to use them, teach the kids how to listen to the teachers telling them how to use them, repair them, figure out ways to make firewalls the kids can't hack to escape from the tedium and bullsh_t of the class now being administered to them via an electronic IV", etc).
•Kids can't learn effectively because of demands for teacher accountability.
2. The teachers, though often well-intentioned, are generally from the very bottom of the barrel of college graduates in terms of grades, ability, and proficiency in almost anything (see how education majors compare to engineering majors in the GRE test given for those going on to graduate school. Look at the absurd product of candidates for either a masters or doctorate in education. Their theses are rarely more than Mickey Mouse feces). Because of this, expecting any sort of major innovation from a group constitutively unable to rise above mediocrity, overly desirous not to rock the boat, and, from an early age, overly eager to please those in authority over them, is a ridiculously false hope.
3. Public schools claim that their objective is to educate students. In reality, their aim is to indoctrinate students and the philosophical core for that indoctrination is a leftist, materialist, collectivist point of view. It has been that way since the second decade of the 20th century when the Gang of Thirteen overturned the recommendations of the Eliot Committee for the standards for secondary education and put into place what has afflicted public education ever since: producing worthy citizens (as defined by the people in charge of producing the curriculum--certainly not EVER by the parents) rather than producing educated people.
•They command ever larger amounts of money and control.The education landscape of the past 100 years or so is littered with the corpses of such schemes that served their purposes to distract the public's attention while the educational beast lumbered forward gobbling everything in its path.
•They inculcate their sociological and political ideas to their hearts content to produce kids chattering their ideas on the environment (environmentalism), industrialization (business is bad, produces pollution, and oppresses people), money (capitalism is bad and makes people selfish and not want to share), government (Democrats are FOR people, Republicans are for BUSINESS, which is evil and greed and oppresses the people, government should provide for everyone's needs), religion (it's divisive and keeps people from coming together in a loving and sharing community provided by the government that should eliminate all the divisive elements of religion so we can all get along).
•They can point to their failures and claim that it's only because they haven't been given enough money, power, and control over those pesky objects of their education to be able to do the job right and then ask for more.
•They occasionally dream up some scheme to produce an educational red herring to throw people off the scent of their incompetence and call it "basic minimum standards" or "basic minimum competency" or "common core."
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”