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Lynn….:
“Common Core has become a misnomer, the seed of truth has been lost, it’s not a curriculum or textbook, it’s a standard each student is expected to reach to avoid remedial courses in college. “We owe it to our children to make sure they have what they need to be successful, 84 percent of teachers support Common Core and so do I.”
His quotes… as per Delaware Newszap.
This is exactly what has foisted this horrible program upon Delaware’s children… This exact same attitude of : your children don’t matter to me; all that matters is campaign contributions by wealthy educational corporations…
Because no, Mr. Lynn. … Children do matter. How dare you say that children don’t matter and only political contributions in your pocket do? Everyone knows, including you, that Common Core is not a set of standards. Common Core is a mushpot of crap foisted upon our children that was not tested, that was not reviewed, that is dangerous, that has caused increased suicides among little children, and that leads to early dementia. Common Core takes “A+” students and makes them “F” students…
Do you even read?
Do you not know that Common Core is a Federal Program being forced on School boards and School districts the nation over? Do you not know that when Christina School District said they thought the Federal compensation program was foolish, they lost not only that funding, but out of spite, were cut other funding as well? If that is not Federal coercion, then you need a dictionary. Do you not know that every single one of Delaware’s superintendents signed a letter saying “stop racing to Common Core?” How do you now know more than every single school district in Delaware? Do you not know that of the 45 states that are mandated to do common core this year, only 10 out of 24 who signed up, are still taking the Smarter Balanced Assessments? Why? Because it is bad. Very bad for children.
Do you not know that children today, are testing higher than you did, when you were in school? Why don’t you know this. Do you not read? Do you know there is no literature on the success of Common Core but there is over 10 thousand personal accounts over the damage it did to 10 thousand parent’s children?
Why do you not know this… It is everywhere… Google: “Common Core is very bad” and read…
Do you not know that most highly qualified professional adults cannot pass the 3rd grade math test? Problem is they can’t understand what the test maker is trying to say, the English is so bad? Why don’t you know this? Do you live in a cardboard box somewhere on the edge of town?
How can anyone in their right mind say that 81% of teachers support Common Core? Where is your link? Are you doing what David Coleman does, just pull numbers out of the air… Because, if you read, you would know, like everyone else in this state, that one third of the teachers say they have never seen any material on Common Core, One half of this nations teachers feel inadequately prepared for Common Core, yet they will be (thanks to Greg Lavelle), required to be evaluated on it this school year… All teachers minus one third leaves 67% All teachers minus half leaves 50%… Not 81%.. So that figure goes against common sense, as well as every teachers opinion…
How can anyone say that 81% of teachers are for Common Core? Do you not read? Tell me you are ignorant that Delaware Teachers (DSEA) voted no confidence in the rollout of Common Core! Tell me you are ignorant that the NEA (National Teachers’ Association) voted no confidence in Arne Duncun and his Common Core! Tell me you are ignorant that the AFT, (American Federation of Teachers) also voted no confidence in Arne Duncun and his Common Core? How can you be ignorant of this? Do you not read? Yet you state 81% of teachers support Common Core?
How can anyone be for a program that abuses children. New York educators ruled that Common Core was a form of child abuse… How can you not know this… Do you not read?
Anyone who does not read, is dangerous to the General Assembly… Your job there is to “read bills” If someone can’t read the newspaper, how can we trust them to “read” bills? Or will you perform your duties like Valerie Longhurst? “Oh, what pretty paper that bill is printed on; I’ll vote for it, (since I don’t read)…. “
I’m amazed that someone in 2014 can still support Common Core…especially with all the evidences showing its great harm that emerged in 2013-2014 school year. Do you also believe the world was created in 6 twenty four hour days? And that the start of the universe occurred somewhere around 4000 BC? And that the sun, moon, and stars all rotate around a flat earth? You must. Since you obviously don’t read…..
Mr. Lynn is bad for Dover’s 31st district… But… oh no, .. what about his opponent?……. Quote:
These were spoken by his opponent… Mr. Taylor, a sportsman and retired Dover police officer…. Dover would be well served by this person… He at least…. obviously reads…
Most states are expected to administer assessments based on the common core for the first time this spring. Fewer than one-third of educators say they have ever had access to high-quality textbooks aligned with the new standards. All the materials so far, generally failed to meet the demands of the common core when rated by educational departments at major universities. The questions on the top of every teachers mind, since the Smarter Balanced Assessments are enacted this spring, (thanks solely to Greg Lavelle, a crony senator from District 4), is this: ‘Where do we get these resources, and how do we know they’re good?’ ”
Even at this very late date, in training for the preparation of test reviews, the rating system on how to tell if a question is relevant or not, is still yet to be determined… We are so behind on this… but expected to hold teachers and schools accountable… It’s like running a NASCAR race without checking whether there is water mixed in with the fuel…
The problem with Common Core is this: implementation of the curriculum, state by state, has outpaced the invention of quality first-class materials… Making a mockery of the entire Common Core process. We are rushing into teaching Common Core, demanding that it, and only it can be taught; and yet all we have in materials, is sloppy crap that was rushed into publication without undergoing any type of review… It is like we mandated all students eat healthy so they must all now eat in the cafeteria, but we didn’t build it yet, so we order out pizza and soda every day… We are undercutting our goal by trying to achieve the goal too fast…
The company doing the ratings is Edreports and like everything else, it is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ideally they will be analysing the smaller innovative companies and comparing them to the larger “buy them up” educational conglomerates… If so, that could shake up the dominate position the big boys have held for a long time…
Here are the curriculums being tested. They aren’t done yet. Please copy them and when you visit your school for visitation, find out which of these your child happens to have… Then check back on the website to see how it gets rated…
GRADES K-5
Common Core, Inc. (Developer); Wiley (Publisher)
• Eureka Math K-5
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Go Math
• Math Expressions
• Math in Focus K-8
• Saxon Math
Kendall Hunt
• Math Trailblazers K-5*
McGraw-Hill
• Everyday Math
• My Math
Pearson Scott Foresman
• enVision Math
• Investigations in Number, Data & Space
TPS Publishing, Inc.
• Creative Core Curriculum for Mathematics with STEM, Literacy and Arts K-8
GRADES 6-8
Agile Mind
• Common Core Middle School Mathematics*
Big Ideas Learning
• Big Ideas Math
Carnegie Learning
• Carnegie Math*
Common Core, Inc.
• Eureka Math 6-8
Edgenuity Inc.
• Edgenuity 6-12*
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Go Math
• Holt McDougal Math
Pearson
• Connected Math Program
• Digits*
• Prentice Hall Math
*Primarily digital materials
SOURCE: Edreports.org
Charter Schools were originally intended to become laboratories that tried random ideas and by their results we could see what could work, and vice versa. However, under intense lobbying from investment houses, the charter movement has been co-opted into having its making money, as their prime objective. Therefore, the Departments of Education, willing enablers of these investment firms, tend to suppress any information that is harmful to charter school growth, while trumpeting only that which obfuscates the harm that charters can do…
But educational statistics are required for each school. We citizens are able to look at that and draw our own conclusion, completely independent of any interference by the current head of the DOE.
So I did a comparison between two charter schools well known to Delawarean educationalists. Kuumba and Moyer….
I got vertigo jumping from site to site so first let me put the info down here on one page…
Rather fascinating.
Barring significant variations in the selection of students, as in one taking only those out of prison, and the other taking only those by over achieving single mothers, the demographics are very similar. So what is different?
Here are the wide variations….
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What are some of the trends? If one takes out the huge difference in special education student numbers, and discounts the drain of special education scores completely:
{100% – 31% = 69% making the AYP scores more representative like this… (22-37)/69 and (3-22%)/69 }
or 31-53% for reading and 4-31% for math we see it matches similar trends for other low level schools in Delaware. Even without its special education students there is still a great difference in output between these two schools….
One seems to be in the mission statements. From Kuumba: Learning does not stop once students leave the classroom or the school. Kuumba Academy has forged partnerships with local universities and other educational and community organizations – i.e. the Grand Opera House, Delaware History Museum, Christina Cultural Arts Center, Delaware College of Art and Design – to create an extended learning environment for its students.
From Moyer: Moyer Academy continues to grow its academic and extracurricular programs.
Another seems to be in the amount of control being given to teachers. Kuumba School staff per admin. 16; Moyer 8. It appears that micromanaging is counter productive.
“What do you mean your scores are low. Tell me why your scores are low, what have you done today to raise your scores. Why can’t you get your kids to learn; I need a report in one hour on why you can’t get your kids to learn. A teacher is supposed to teach. If you can’t get your scores up by tomorrow we are going to have another long meeting. Can you give me just one reason why your scores are low compared to Kuumba’s? Why can’t you simply teach, you are a teacher right… And you can’t give me one single reason why you are not able to raise your kids scores!”
“Ok.. I have one reason…” “Finally good, what is it?” “I’m in here listening to you 2 hours every day and while gone, I can’t teach.”
Moyer micromanages its results downward; Kuumba lets its teachers teach. That is the fundlemental difference between these two schools. It’s the difference between top down management, and bottom up support. The latter works and the former doesn’t.
This comparison should be an eye opener to all those Broad educated reformers looking for work, as well as all those districts looking to hire principals. The reformers principles are counter productive. Lets’ do a list.
More administration —- counter productive
Doubling down ———- counter productive
Browbeating kids ——- counter productive
Eliminating tenure —– counter productive
Cutting back on teachs– counter productive
The lesson from Kuumba and Moyer is this. What works best is less interference. Give teachers time to teach and great results will happen. Teaching is about people, not tests. Teaching is about building relationships, not scaring the mental shit out of little kids. Teaching is about learning the full universe of human capacity; not reading and math on two standardized tests…. Positive environments yield positive results. Negative environments yield negative results…
Fixing education is as simple as getting Billionairea and politicians out of the way and letting teachers teach…
Sometimes one goes through an “A Ha” moment. When something so obvious hits you like a ton of bricks. The catalyst this time came from Utah, home of the NSA information vault. The spark was the lawsuit in Utah’s court calling for a halt against the implementation of Common Core… Brilliant.
The Governor himself, in response to the clamor of his people, (that will never happen here) has asked the Utah Attorney General to do thorough legal review of theof the rapidly adopted, unvetted education and testing standards known as Common Core…..
His main question (as expected out of Utah) was does Common Core demonstrate Federal entanglement….
For anyone who knows Common Core, that is a no-brainer. When someone says, we will withhold your life support unless you do what we say, that is coercion. Coercion is a form of entanglement.
However… there is lawsuit filed by the Libertas Instutute that goes beyond that, and directly approaches the problem of common core. The Plaintiffs consist of parents, teachers, and school board members.
Utah state law (§ 53A-1-402.6) requires the Board to establish and implement standards “in consultation with local school boards, school superintendents, teachers, employers, and parents.” This lawsuit focuses on one fundamental question: did the Board violate the law in rushing through Common Core’s adoption without required public input?
At no point prior to binding millions of Utahns to this new program did the Board consult with these various constituencies. Instead, the Board consulted with out of state consortia and other related groups, accepting Common Core in rapid fashion in hopes of obtaining the federal “Race to the Top” grant……
Delaware Code Title 14, Chapter 1, Subchapter 3, § 151 State assessment system; rules and regulations. states thusly:
“The Secretary shall consult with the State Board and representatives of the local school districts in designing and implementing the assessment program required under this section.”
That did not happen. Two signatures committed Delaware and every other state to Common Core. The Governor’s, and the Secretary of Education’s…. In fact, Delaware legislators were whipped up to vote for Common Core before any of them knew what it was. No one knew what it was. At that time it wasn’t invented yet…
There is also another caveat unique to Delaware law. This pertains to special educational students. It states:
“The Department shall establish alternate assessments for children with disabilities who cannot participate in the statewide assessment of student achievement even with appropriate accommodations and modifications. Alternate assessments must be developed and used in the statewide assessment beginning not later than the 2010-2011 school year. Each local school district, through the individual student’s Individualized Education Program Team or 504 Team, shall determine what assessment the student will take…”
This state law (151 (f)) IS being violated by the Federal mandate that all students, with no exceptions for disabilities, take the Smarter Balanced Assessments with no accommodations…. Delaware, at the expense of it’s children, IS following the Federal Mandate to the letter. No exceptions for disabilities… and one must add, no concern for the psychological well being of those children forced into a position to which they have only one alternative: to fail. Apparently, this is in violation of state statute.
A second point of violation, is this phrase:… “Each local school district, through the individual student’s Individualized Education Program Team or 504 Team, shall determine what assessment the student will take…” That means at least with each child with a disability, the person with the last say, is the local school district, not the state or Federal programs. Anything otherwise, is a violation of state law.
This state law (151 (j)) further states: “a student who has been formally classified as having 1 of the following 4 conditions, and whose parent, IEP team, and school district superintendent or charter school leader believe will not produce valid results on either the standard or alternate assessment despite accommodations and adjustments, shall receive his or her alternate assessment through consideration of work samples, projects and portfolios, which facilitate authentic and direct gauges of student performance with respect to both relevant state standards and the student’s IEP (a “portfolio assessment”). The insistence of the Smarter Balanced Assessment puts this law into jeopardy.
There is the issue of precedent… Title 14, Chapter 2, Subchapter 1, § 203 Special programs. notes that special programs, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment which was not grandfathered in would by default be a special program,…. states:
“The Department with the approval of the State Board of Education and the school board of any local reorganized school district, either separately or jointly, may establish special programs for children who are in need of education not provided for in regular classes or schools.” The imperative point, is that precedent has always stated that new policies must meet with the approval of the State Board of Education and the school board of any local reorganized school district. No input was solicited from parents, teachers, or school boards on adhering to the new standards.
I won’t go into proof that the standards are harmful. Anyone filing a lawsuit should just peruse the canon of literature attesting to how Common Core hurts kids… Proving justification of harm will be a non-issue.
We are past due for a citizen’s lawsuit seeking an order enjoining the Governor and Secretary of Education from further implementing Common Core in Delaware’s public schools, from requiring Delaware’s public schools to further adopt or abide by Common Core, and from enforcing Common Core in Delaware’s public schools….
The lawsuit should for a declaratory judgment, saying that the Governor failed to consult with local school boards, superintendents, teachers, employers and parents as required by law (Title 14, Chapter 1, Subchapter 3, § 151 State assessment system; rules and regulations.). It asks for an order enjoining the Board from further implementing Common Core, from requiring schools to implement Common Core, and from enforcing Common Core….
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….
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….
In Maryland, among experts, the test was rolled out to explain how in its complexity, it would test whether a child was taught well, or not taught well at all.
The test question culled from the fourth grade test, was this…..
Now solve it…
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Did you get 936? My! You are good, you adult, you! Pat yourself on the back and go get some ice cream for your reward…
How long did it take you? Is this appropriate for 4th Graders? 4th graders? little 9 year olds? When we were in 4th grade, we were just being taught multiplication. Single digits, 1-10….
Here is what needs to be known before tackling this problem….
- The definitions of perimeter and area
- How to find perimeter and area
- The definition of a square mile
- The properties of a rectangle
- How to solve for an unknown in a perimeter
- Multiplication (up to multi-digit)
- Addition and subtraction (up to multi-digit)
Did you know this in 4th Grade? Should you know all of this in 4th Grade? Most educators say ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!!
This is very damaging for children to be put under this much pressure at such an early age. On a stress level this is the equivalent ot seeing their parents shot in front of their eyes. It borders the shame of being raped by someone you trusted in your family. How is a child supposed to know this…
Imagine if you as a teacher knew this problem was on the test and knew that if sufficient numbers of your students got it wrong, you would be without any way to pay your bills?
Week one… You would make sure everyone knew what Area was..
Week two… You would make sure everyone knew what a Perimeter was….
Week three… You would make sure everyone knew what a rectangle was…
Week four…. You would work on how to figure out the area of a rectangle.
Week five…. You would work on how to figure out the perimeter of a rectangle.
Week six…. You would work on how to figure what a missing piece of perimeter would be if you knew one side and the total.
Week seven.. You would work on how to figure the area
Week eight,.. You would work on how to multiply single digits.
Week nine… You would work on how to multiply double digit numbers.
Week ten…. You would work on how to solve many problems like this…..
Ten weeks… of nothing else. Just teaching this one problem. Gone would be time for everything else… You can see it is impossible to do… You can see that no matter how good ones teacher is, unless parents have already taught their children all these complex measure, and unless those children are tutored continuously over every minute of their free time, they will fail….
One has to get 936 as the answer… or one fails… This test is college level. It is similarly complex to a physic’s problem…. Why is it being given to 4th grade?
Your child will be irreparably damaged if they take the Smarter Balanced Assessment tests… There needs to be more education among parents. This test is dangerous for your child’s mental health. No doubt, you.. well armed with 12 years of schooling, and perhaps post secondary education, were under great stress to fill out that answer? Weren’t you?
What if you were 9 years old. Didn’t know multiplication. What a perimeter was. How area was determined. …… and all because your teacher spent 10 weeks preparing for another problem… that wasn’t on this test…..
Opt out. Opt out is your only option. Don’t worry if it is legal… Opt out. You, are in charge of your child… Opt out. Opt out. Opt out.
Fed Ex shooting. A FedEx employee wearing ammunition draped across his chest “like Rambo” opened fire
All legal in Georgia.
In addition to a shotgun, the gunman also had an undisclosed number of molotov cocktails,
All legal in Georgia.
The shooter first shot a security guard at a shack outside the building.. Everything up to the split second the shell impacted the guard, was under Georgia’s new law, completely legal.
He was a white male.
Is anyone really surprised? Guns are more important than people inside the state lines of Georgia…..
This was in his editorial:
“One of the best investments the business community can make is to simply share our knowledge of leadership, goal-setting and time management. “
Business community: shall we present your knowledge of leadership?
“I don’t care if you do think it’s a really stupid piss poor idea that will destroy my business. It’s my way or the highway… Wait a minute. You’re fired! So it’s the highway. There! I decided it for you!.. Seriously, how about them apples?…”
Business community: shall we present your knowledge of goal setting…?.
“Um. If they meet their goal, they will all get lazy afterwards and not want to do anything… I know, I’ll raise the goal 4 gazillion times higher than anyone can possibly achieve in reality!… Then I’ll fire them for not meeting it… That should keep them scared of me and on their toes…”
Business community: shall we present your knowledge of time management?
“Holy piss! Grading these motherfvcking papers? I’m not doing them, they can kiss my fvcking a$s. I don’t have time for that s\it… I gotta tee off at 2:30…..”
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Somehow… I think as far away, as we can keep businesses from our kids while they are growing up…. the better all will be…. Kids have the right to grow up right.
Our children can learn what real assholes are, AFTER college is finished…. like, duh,… when it’s time to enter the…… business world…… heavens. Who in their screwed-up mind still thinks that businesses are something holy to still be venerated? Duh… How long has it been since Cheney took over our country? Fourteen years now?
The principle statement supporting the implementation of Common Core, has always been that we need a better educated workforce to do tomorrow’s jobs….
Governor Markell said it in his state of the state address on the day the DOW fell 176 points….
This has been a reoccuring theme of his; “the education of today will not bring us the jobs of tomorrow..”
Although that sounds good in soundbyte form, it is not grounded too well in reality. In reality, the wages of jobs have declined as the demand for work rose to become greater than the supply. In other words, unemployment is too high… and that suppresses the cost of labor.
When one’s boss can hire one cheaper to do the same job, that is not the best time to ask your boss for a raise…..
Today, our minimum wage is being paid to college graduates and high school graduates. It used to be paid to those who were either still students, or never did graduate….
Image Courtesy of Economic Policy Institute
Today! Across the minimum workforce almost 5 out of every 10 have a college experience; and almost 8 out of 10 graduated high school or have a GED.
We are already educating our lowest level of workers far above what the job market requires… There are no jobs to be given to those who will soon emerge college or career ready (SAT score over 1550), unless they first fill in the minimum wage jobs these poor blokes working now, give up when they get bumped up into real jobs….
If you bump your newly trained graduates directly into those high paying jobs, then you will be freezing the current generation into these minimum wage level jobs at which they are currently stuck…
One cannot bootstrap a educational process into producing high quality job applicants, when there are no high quality jobs taking applications…
We already have a high quality educated work force; we call it our minimum wage crowd….
So Governor. What are you going to do?
As I see it here are your options….
You have to create an industry here in Delaware. Here is one: wind power infrastructure and solar power grid efficiency. You just make it up and go after it, hoping it doesn’t implode like Fisker and Bloom… The difference is that with Fisker and Bloom, you said “here is some money, do something”; you left it up to them. With this, you get Federal funding and we go government control all the way involving public-private partnerships. We have the land, we have the technical expertise, we have a scientifically educated work force; all we need are capital and someone to direct it.
Secondly, the government needs to create high labor-intensive industries. Areas where humans will not be replaced by robotics. Health care comes to mind. Personal care of senior citizen in their homes, is another. Food inspection is a third. Why can’t we have a public-private enterprise here in Delaware which performs the FDA food inspections for the entire East Coast? Environmental inspection industries is a fourth avenue of opportunity; testing and verification, done by the state to insure compliance of air, water, and soil standards…
As one can tell, these require more taxes. Those who have benefited from the bounce-back of the financial markets, should be the ones to carry the rest of us forward. That would be the 1%. There are two ways to fund our future growth… A) We can borrow and spread the cost over time by increasing our debt and pay it back later, or B) we can pay as we go by assessing more from those in real time, who can afford it without denting their lifestyle…. Being a fiscal conservative, I fall into taxing now, paying now, and keeping our debt levels low.(B).. It makes too much sense to do it any other way….since we currently have an abundance of cash in the hands of the 1% from which to draw.
The point being made through all these wishful plans, is that employment in the private sector is now full. It will not grow more jobs on its own. It is now required of government to prime the pump; we need it more than ever. Most of those currently unemployed will need government jobs to get back to work. There is much to be done to our infrastructure; we have cut government for so long, that many things are close to being broken….
We have an educated work force ready and able. It is our college and high school educated minimum wage earners.... We need to first give them the opportunity to move up into jobs for which they are qualified to do,.. in order to make them better citizens. Playing with education again and again to make more minimum wage workers who are overqualified, is not going to do anyone any good at all… it is just circling money around where it is not needed.
kavips 