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This is Common Core. Point is: we are determining a student’s future, a teacher’s future, a school’s future, and the entire future of the combined Educational Departments of the University of Delaware, Delaware State, and Wilmington University’s …. based on a race between a pineapple and a hare…
Please send more examples… Thank you.
I’m usually done with a piece of legislation when it doesn’t go my way.. I always shared a disdain for those who lose and refuse to accept reality for what it is… But I’ve received so many questions over SB51, that I’ll break protocol, to discuss it for one last time…
The main question I’ve received most often, is why did I take on this unattainable cause. Surely one could see the writing on the wall when the Senate voted? Wasn’t it a waste of time?
Oddly, no. And I’m perplexed a little as to why I feel that way. Because it did suck up a lot of time and it had only two people vote against it in the entire General Assembly, and two abstentions (one principled and one physical.) So I’m going to try and work it out here, in type, as to why it was important to lead a fight against it. One that if one was keeping score, turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
The reason for SB51″s success, was its stealth. It was out of committee, in the Senate, out of the Senate, in the House committee, and on the House floor, each time with very little notice. In fact, it wasn’t until after it had passed the Senate that I began hearing how bad this bill really was. Perhaps in a regular year, that would not have occurred. Someone would have read the bill earlier as it hit the docket and passed that information along. It should be noted this is an extraordinary year. The recomposition of this General Assembly has made many big changes possible. Gay Marriage, Background Checks, Reporting Stolen Firearms, Repeal of Death Penalty, Kinder-Morgan, Assault Bans, Bans of High Capacity Clips, have kind of sucked the wind out of the room when it comes to a bill that says something sensible like we should be hiring smart teachers instead of dumb ones.
One of our most progressive commentators said something like “I can see no one having a problem with that.”
And indeed. This bill seemed to have everyone on board. DSEA, that educational labor union who represents teachers, RODEL who represents the corporate Investors, the Governor who put this prominently in his state of the state address, both parties whom neither wanted to be seen as being against better education, the Chamber of Commerce and those who fund the entities inside the Community Service Building on 10th Street, progressives, conservatives. There was no one who seemed not to want to rubber stamp it…
It took a lot of work to wake up even three people to contest it…. And that is a start….
With overwhelming support, my goodness, in percentage terms…. 93% of the entire General Assembly was in favor. That ironically was the same percentage of Delawareans that wanted Offshore Wind over the objections of 4 well place members of the Executive Committee back in 2007-8…
How can anyone “credible” be against such a good bill with “overwhelming” support?
I would say there is one common thread among those who first voiced opposition and carried the water for trying to educate the public about this bill. And if you agree or disagree, please feel free to chime in. This is an informal piece.
Anyone who has experienced Common Core, who has actually experienced it, would be against this bill. I experienced it by helping a student with their homework assignment. Teachers and administrators experience it in their professional capacity. School Boards experience it by being in the cross fire between the DOE and parents who are as upset as I was with the crap that is being passed off as “learning.”…
Obviously from the results of the vote, very few people in Delaware have experience Common Core. Once you see what it has done to your kids, you are outraged. Outraged. There is no other accurate description….
So the vote in support of SB51, was primarily based, if I could extrapolate, on ignorance. I too would have been right there with them if I had not had the cathartic experience of meeting Common Core face to face. Once one does, one quickly learns to hate it. For many, many years I have been privy to a lot of grumbling from educators over each new “program of the year”, but never, never have I experienced a deterioration in a student’s drive to do well, as I have seen across the board with Common core…. “A” Students just giving up and settling for “C’s”, because of the capriciousness of the teaching and those learning materials that come in “packets.”
Here is what has to happen. These tests and packets need to get leaked to the public. Once seen and ridiculed, the proper perspective and potential damage from Common Core becomes clearer. Further more, every single member of the educational committees of both the Delaware Senate and House, should take this bill. Then the General Assembly would finally be in alignment with where the parents will be next year.
This year was really the first where Common Core was trialed. Next year it will be much more extensive.
So when one says that our teaching colleges and universities will be rated by how well their student teacher’s students do on Common Core tests over the next five years, quite a bit of that sentence totally depends on how good or bad Common Core is… I can tell you… it’s really.. really… bad.
Common Core is no better than “No Child Left Behind.” That too was a landmark piece of legislation to make teachers accountable to teaching, and not sending unprepared students up the ladder. It was hailed as the crowning achievement of American Society. Those very few who looked at the detail, and questioned how it would work, were laughed at as being among those who wanted to “leave children behind.” But guess what? When that was implemented in full across the nation, it didn’t work. Students did worse instead of better. Gee, the educational structure asked? How can this be? Answer was, it didn’t work in Texas under then Governor George W. Bush, either. They just tweaked the test scores.
Common Core is no better. In fact, it is probably worse. And there are many reasons why, which have been discussed on this blog many times, as well as on Transparent Christina, Kilroy’s of Delaware, Delaware Way, and Seventh Type… It “can” be better, but those pieces are being squashed under “bigger” principles, such as busting the teachers union, paying off Wall Street investors, making fistfuls of dough out of charter schools and vouchers… Big money has got its roots into education and is now trying to choke off all competition from good crops..
This bill’s overwhelming victory is not the end…. In fact, I think it may just hasten the end of Common Core, instead of extending it… I think so because I know how bad this program is.. I know there is no way you, once you experience it’s insanity, its inadequacy, and its ineptitude, will be supportive of common core… You can’t be.. No one like being inside a Kafka novel. We have nine months to educate Delaware what Common Core will do to your children. Nine months… If we are wrong, and the public does not by then demonize this program, then perhaps it is good that this bill passed.
But I’ve seen Common Core face to face… so I sincerely doubt that outcome….
Then, come next January, January 2014 an election year no doubt, we again will see these familiar words with a lot of support behind it.
“Section 1. Amend the title of Chapter 12, Title 14 of the Delaware Code, by making insertions as shown by underlining and deletions as shown by strikethrough as follows:”……
Obama just fired the acting director of the IRS… This person was not even part of the IRS when allegedly this Tea Party business occurred. He became director just after last year’s election. He found out about the problem at the same time as did us, And Obama fired him. Wow.
For you see, nothing really wrong was done. The group who were looking at Tea Party applications have a job to do..
But the targeting! Why wasn’t Think Progress or George Saros targeted to?
Behind all this are the staggering numbers. Out of thousands of applications, only a handful were rejected. You know what happens while a nonprofit organization is waiting to get this approval? They get to operate as a nonprofit organization. The harm caused by this action is exactly zero….
Which is why we are only hearing about it now. Some of these could have been shut down, possibly throwing the election towards a Democrat, but they weren’t…
No groups have sued the IRS in response to their rejection...
These are agents doing their job. They responded to an unusual influx of groups with political language in their applications all going after a designation that excludes groups that carry out many political actions.
The only scandal here is that this is being reported as if the IRS did something wrong in injecting itself into politics. The law requires that the IRS inject itself into politics. Don’t like it? Change the law. Don’t attack the people trying to enforce it.
And now, the acting director is fired….Just like that. over something that took place over which he no control, no input, and no knowledge….. and wasn’t even in charge when it happened…… That person has retired.
Now I’ll tell you why it was the right thing for Obama to do… “the fact of the matter is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.”
That is why it was done. It was not done for the past. It was not done for the present. It was done because without doing it, the IRS would always be tainted with the memory.
Americans would ask,… are they looking at me? Are they doing it now? Things would grind to a halt. But after today, i seriously doubt that anyone in the office is going to say… “let use all this power to demonize our opposition?” I know that were I to get audited or have dealings with the IRS, I would know it wasn’t because of what I am. It was because something I did probably wasn’t kosher…. Upon opening that letter of dread, my reaction is now…” oh, I did that?” instead of …”they’re out to get me, see?”
How do I know this? Because someone who happened to be the IRS director at the wrong time this news let out, was made accountable…. No one is going to do it again….
This is why Obama is so great. I remember George HW Bush sticking with LA police commissioner Gates, who without doubt, was running a racially intimidating police force. Not acting on that cost him the election.. Firing innocent people who do a good job, is not easy. It is especially hard when one fires someone to save the ship, even though that person has no guilt, no accountability, but is in the wrong place at the wrong time..
Bad as it was, it had to be done to save the accountability and honor of the United States of America. We’ve heard from Delaware Politics and national Tea Party candidates how corrupt the Democrats and Obama are. In one swift move, what we Democrats always knew is now proven. Obama don’t stand for that.
You can go to bed now. Our country is in safe hands… Honesty has taken the upper hand.
Lost my Gun, What should I do?
Lost my Gun, What should I do?
Lost my Gun, What should I do?
Better call nine, one, one…..
Diane picked up that the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting Wall Street investors are getting a little shaky with UNO, a quasi-government-private partnership that was supposed to rapidly expand charter schools in and around Chicago.
An expansion that was to be partially funded by $37.5 million of Wall Street’s money.
A crack has just opened in the impenetrable fortress wall. A pinpoint of light is shining through.
The easiest way to stop the charter school process may not be through legislation, but by an actions far simpler to achieve: Make charter schools unprofitable… A philanthropist will invest in a charter if it earns no money. But Wall Street investor certainly will not.
That is the problem they have with Chicago.. Chicago points the way on how to organize and hit Wall Street where it hurts…
A. Picket Charter Schools as unfair to Labor. Who wants to sign their children up in a school with picket signs outside protesting the destruction of the middle class by Wall Street? What kind of status symbol would that be, to have to tell your boss where your kids go to school? An embarrassment, that’s what.
B. Call state legislators to complain about anything negative you can find out about the “new” charter school. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Truly, you are doing that lawmaker a favor; you are saving his butt from being blindsided by parents back home. All he hears from lobbyists in his office, is how great charter schools theoretically are. Reality is far different…
C. Threat of unionizing all Charter School Teachers… And why not? Why not enlist Charter School teachers and help them get organized to demand higher wages or strike? Aren’t they people too? Why should they work for a lot less than public school teachers, when they could easily be making the same salaries if they would just organize into a union, as do public teachers? What Charter School teacher would say no to higher wages? What Charter School Teacher could say no to higher wages… It is time to aggressively recruit.
D. Investigate all transactions to insure no embezzlement. Check over state funding to Charters which is published and look aggressively for corruption, nepotism, and anything to taint the charter school in bad light, thereby jeopardizing state funding…
Arne Duncun said… we would learn a lot from Chicago… and he was right.
In short, UNO obtained $98 million from the state legislature to build new charters. It turns out that $8.5 million of that money went to companies owned by two brothers of UNO’s number 2 official, Miguel d’Escoto. When the scandal broke, he stepped down from his $200,000 job, resulting in then Governor Pat Quinn to halt payment on the balance still owed to UNO…. Investors got worried and question UNO in a conference call, over the scandal, over the unionization of Charter teachers taking place, over the halt of construction on one of the new schools for failure to pay the bills, The governor has suspended payments of the remainder of state money until satisfied that the Charter is performing as promised. And this just in, UNO spokesperson confessed to the Chicago Sun-Times that “future funding may be at stake..”
The lesson here, is that getting a legislator to part with his campaign money coming in, is a lot harder than making Wall Street’s return on investment extremely risky. When Wall Street starts consistently losing money each time it invests in education, it will move on to something more prosperous.
We see what we have to do,…. Now, lets make it happen…
Union leaders. Start pressing charter schools to join.
Bloggers. Start pouring over the balance sheets on line of your nearest Charter School.
Parents. Write you legislator on how much Charter Schools have destroyed the educational experience for you child…
Yes we can do this… We can learn a lot from Chicago.
Today is School Board Elections…Polls are open 10-8… If anyone is sponsored by Markell or Rodell or RTTT or WSFS, don’t vote for them.. If anyone is sponsored by DSEA, they are on the students side. They are safe.
So go out and vote like a goat… Be… B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-D
I’d never thought I’d write that. How could anyone in their right mind be against raising teacher’s standards… After all it is our kids we are talking about who will suffer….
Exactly, Passing SB 51 with S/A 1 Amendment attached, will cause our kids to suffer. That’s how I can write that. Otherwise I’d be full force behind this bill just as was every senator who voted for it….
You ask, how can raising standards on teachers, hurt our children?
I will ask you back; ”How would you like to take your brand new car you just purchased to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop and have him work it over? How could that possibly hurt your car?”
Basically that’s what this law does for education. It is as if we passed a law for cars that said every new car purchased had to be re-certified by Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop. The entire premise on this auto legislation lies in this one single question: gee, who is Joe?
If Joe is someone who is the world’s best mechanic, factory trained by every car manufactured, a man or woman who can analyze myriads of problems by just with listening with a fine-tuned ear, then maybe this bill could possibly be ok. But if Joe has no knowledge of electronic computers, but learned his mechanics back in the days of steel and oil, and is a complete loss when he sees a car with no distributer cap, then taking your car that runs perfectly to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop, can damage your car pretty darn bad.
And THAT is the problem with SB 51… We don’t know who Joe is….
What we do know, is that our car is purring perfectly, heck we just bought it, everything was tuned at the factory. Since it is straight from the factory, it is running very well, no play in the wheel, clean car smell, all items are working, and even our factory tells us to make sure we take it back to a “factory approved shop” for all repairs in order not to void the warranty…. But our government is making us take it to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop.… And we still don’t know who Joe is?
And we are not too enthralled by all the junk cars piled up in its back lot…….
That is what is wrong with SB 51….
Our great educational training program that is functioning very well, is going to be tested and inspected by someone who doesn’t know crap…
That should scare the hell out of every single parent….
The educational system of America over the last 13 years has been disrupted. Good teachers have been fired, to be replaced with bad ones. Students used to read literature, and now they are handed “packets” and read test questions. Schools that have been opened for a century, have been closed…. The educational system is in disarray; a disarry that appears to have been forced down from the top.
We’ve all been there… The new boss walks in, and yells “things are going to be different now”. Some are excited, some are afraid, but this boss is out of control… He arbitrarily fires, can’t hire fast enough, and the business breaks down. It becomes broken. He came into fix, and it got put… into a fix. So he storms out, blaming all those left for his need to make an exit. And then everyone is asked to put it back together, and they do, then the next boss is hired… If you work in America, you’re guaranteed to have been through this scenario.
We are going to do that with teachers? Who’s this guy, Joe again? Is this test going to be made by the same ones that lowered Delaware’s results? Is this test going to be like those 5th grader tests loaded with 7th grade questions using letters a,b,c in algebraic math?
As that car owner, we have the best educational system bar none. Delaware educators have among toughest standards in the country. Counting every school, even the most stringent Ivy League schools, the University of Delaware is ranked 37th in the nation. That’s ahead of Rutgers, Temple, and even Boston University. Delaware State University is solid Tier 2 school.
Currently in Delaware’s educational programs, only one third make it through the tough gauntlet into teaching. All students graduating from UD, DSU, and WU have passed Praxis I and II; have logged hundreds of hours of observation and additional hundreds more hours of supervised teaching under the watchful eye of master teachers in our public schools. Compared to the standards even 10 years ago, new Delaware teachers graduated by these universities are the best prepared to enter the classroom in our history.
Delaware should be pretty damn proud. Instead we appear to be on the verge of committing a rash act full of unintended consequences. Our head is in the sand. Ok, the argument may go…. “If we’re so good, what possiblE harm can befall us if we take our new baby to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop?
Apart from the fact that we do not know who “Joe” is or will be when we get there, there are these reasons. The changes in SB 51/SA-1 actually lower some credentialing standards rather than raise them [see the section on now accepting Composite Scores].
Currently all Delaware student teachers take the Praxis One and the Praxis Two. No pass, no teach. These are the factory cars in the educational equation. There are composed by NCATE, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. This is a very solid organization. If you go to their website right now, you will see that they pre-published their accreditation standards for public view and comments. They also dropped Wesley College’s accreditation for not living up to the standards.
This bill would replace these standards with ones created by the Delaware Department of Education. Returning to the Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop analogy, one has to wonder how a 3 year Phys Ed elementary teacher, can do better than a national organization that accredits schools.
Delaware has the 37th BEST teacher school ranked in the nation. And after this bill is passed, we are going to completely gut our entire program out of all we do so well, and have a 3 year elementary Physical Education Teacher rebuild our entire program from scratch….. One who has never gone through the RTTT testing he inflicts on others? One who quite questionably doesn’t meet the minimum 5 year requirement necessary to be a DOE?
It’s in the bill. that is what it says.
Would we let someone who has never been a doctor create the state’s medical certification program? Would we let a non-lawyer create the state’s Bar exam? Would we let a manager of McDonalds create our state’s nutritional guidelines?
With this administration and this Senate, I really don’t know. We just might, based on what I’m seeing right before me!
So, you are saying you would really take your BMW, Rolls, or Cadillac to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop to be certified to drive it in Delaware? Wouldn’t you be afraid he’d mess it up, especially since it is working rather well right now? Ranked 37th!..
I can hear “Joe” now… “What are all these damn stupid wires for. (Rip,rip,rip) My old Model T never had this crap”…
It’s our kids. We can’t rush this, and this bill has been rushed far too fast through the Senate. The House needs to slow down and debate this one…
We can’t afford to lose our 37th top spot in the nation for which we worked so hard and so long to get….. We got to stop this bill that will make our cars all go to “Joe’s” .
Today at 2:00 the vote will begin on House Bill 75. . It will replace Delaware’s Civll Union law with that of marriage. For gays it is the end of a long hard fight to gain respectability; after all the jeers, self-loathing, insults, hurled their way, they are human in every regard known to man. The last distinction will be dropped.
This moment will also determine the future of the Republican Party. Those that vote no against this proposition, will wear it around their necks indefinitely. Times are changing and Republicans have only two options left…. They can be known as being one who opened the door, or as one on the other side, trying to block it and keep it shut.
History is not kind to those on the wrong side. The Herbert Hoovers. The Richard Nixons. The George W. Bushs… That is the side on which you will be. Particularly if you staked your vote on doom and gloom arriving at our doorstep, and nothing happens, Your past words will get thrown back at you every time it helps someone else get ahead….
But what if Republicans voted for it unanimously? What would happen if the Republican Party also said Yes to HB 75? it would electrify the party. Republicans would no longer be the footstool that gets kicked around because it is always in the wrong part of the room.
If Republicans voted yes to HB 75, there would be no reason NOT to vote for Republicans in 2014. All the stereotypes would shatter as if in a thousand pieces of glass… All that old baggage that hits you squarely on the head every single time you campaign, wouldn’t be there…
People for the first time since the 90′s, would see you as human beings who are individuals and have the thoughts they do, not because the are injected with a chemical, but because those conservative thoughts make real good sense…
Once you get a reputation, small changes don’t change it. It takes something really big, huge, to shatter an old reputation and be seen in truth for what you are….
This is that opportunity for the Republican Caucus. You are Senators. You vote for your constituents as well as your state. What is morally right is unquestionable here. Single sex marriage hurts no one and is the only fair vote possible. What is questionable, is your courage to accept it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but all of you have staff or friends of family who are gay. You KNOW the stuff being said against gay marriage is crap…
Do you have the courage to do the right thing? Of course you do. You are Republicans in a Democratic state… You have tons of courage. But do you have the will to unite in solidarity and have the entire Republican caucus vote Yes to single sex marriage?
If you don’t, it will haunt you till the end of your days….
Does anyone remember Senator Robert Byrd, longest serving US senator in history? Well, every time he was introduced on television while alive and even at death, it was always accompanied by the acknowledgement he was once a Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan… He long ago apologized he was wrong, but that option had made great sense to him at the time.
Remember this, as you vote. History is fickle if it doesn’t go your way….
” Benghazi.Benghazi.Benghazi.Benghazi.Benghazi.”
OH SHUT UP YOU STUPID OLD FARTS!
Isn’t that far more important? 137 accidental shootings because we can’t responsibly handle weapons of mass destruction?
137/ 57 fatal Guns in the US are the log in our eye. Meanwhile we try to take splinters out of the eyes of others!
And we’re wasting yet another day of Congress to rehash what the last 17 hearings on the same topic have dug up? One that killed just 4 Americans in a terrorist ambush, something of which we have no control over? And we want to get down to the bottom of who is to blame? But 137 actual shootings occur, and these same people drink champagne and eat caviar while whooping and rejoicing that background checks got defeated?
We have got to rid ourselves of these outdated farting Republicans, either one way or another….. Maybe give them some Beano. For heavens sake, let’s get our nation’s priorities in order.
There is a dual application of interpretation going on. The new head of the NRA James Porter, an attorney who defends gun manufactures in lawsuits, is quoted as calling our president a fake president; he once termed the Civil War of Southern Disobedience, as the “War of Northern Aggression,”; he believes that one of our highest priorities should be to train and arm all our citizens so that, when the time comes, they can “fight tyranny” and impose their will upon the rest of the population; who believes white is right, brown goes down, and guns are the way to achieve that end…..
He is now the new head of the NRA, an organization once dedicated to outdoor sportsmen and hunters.
If he were Muslim, he’d be under surveillance for fear of blowing up people at a Marathon.. James Porter’s words are more inciteful than any mullah.
Either we back off all Muslims, or we treat the NRA as we would Al Qaeda under Osama Bin Laden….
Not to do so is simply continuing a double standard…..
The NRA … IS the new Muslim…. Anyone who condones Newtown Connecticut as a great secret United States of American plot is simply put, … untrustworthy. It is time to round up all NRA members in put them in internment camps for observation just as we did for the Japanese during WWII..
