From The Archives Delaware's Educational Goals

The above shows how Governor Markell rewrote Delaware’s educational goals. As you can plainly see, both the old and new had 100% of Delaware’s students succeeding by this year, 2014…. It was this goal that got us the Race To The Top Funding. It was this goal that was in place since NCLB beginning in 2002.

Here is the actual result, now, as of 2014….

DCAS math 2014DCAS reading 2014

The most relevant for comparative purposes is the right column of all the grades combined….
As you can see we did not hit the goal of 100%.. We fell backwards since our last gain in 2012…

Across this time we had a federal infusion of over $119 million dollars. So finances aren’t the problem. Across this time, we had higher quality teachers. So teaching is not the problem. Across this time, we had education reform.

Educational reform IS the problem. Particularly Common Core. Common Core confuses children. It is like you learned English all your life, and suddenly now you have to read and speak in Mandarin. Common Core is little different from the teaching of old; it is just that they changed the names of everything. Every adult and child upon hearing the Common Core gobblyspeak, says “huh?”…

The “educational governor” got tripped up on Common Core. It is like he suited up for the big game day of his Superbowl, wearing his Gucci dress shoes… not his regular cleats. Though he tries to run using all his old moves, his feet just fly while he stays stationary in one spot. Most of us would expect that from his hiring of a 29 year old to run the Department of Education, someone whose educational specialty in college was studying gym. But even that might have worked, if we hadn’t been so gung-ho on Common Core.

When there was NO COMMON CORE “2011-2012” we had amazing results.

Then Common Core began to deflate our test scores. Common Core cost 30% of Delaware’s children to NOT REACH THEIR GOAL, and thus, is the primary cause of Delaware’s educational system not reaching its goal of 100%. One needs no more evidence than tracking the results of our pilot programs, and all should now insist that Delaware too (along with multiple states) abandon the Common Core Curriculum and fall back on what worked so well in 2012….