Charters: Just Stop Listening To Their Twisted Logic…

As anyone who has engaged charter supporters in their quest to determine what is best for education in the long run, knows these myths are false…..

• Charters teach better.
• Charters score better on standardized tests
• Charters have few discipline problems
• Charters have a high demand for seats, you can’t argue against high demand.

None of these hold up under scrutiny…  One quickly finds that in Delaware, whenever anyone argues for the continuation of Charter Schools, they are arguing for the continuation of one single charter school:  The Charter School of Newark. or CSN for short.. (One almost wishes they would add Yorklyn to their title so we could experience fond memories whenever we called it:  CSN & Y…)

There is only one argument for charters that has any merit, and that merit is not logical, but a strong one politically… People want to send their children to charters so why get rid of them…

True, Newark Charter (sorry Yorklyn) does have a waiting list, and so does Red Clay’s Wilmington Charter…

But what about the great and prestigious Academy of Dover?

Kevin tells us… 

Mr. Blowman noted that the school’s enrollment has declined steadily over the years, from 308 students in school year 2013-14 to 247 students this school year.

Their approved charter enrollment is 300 students.  Charters can’t go below 80% of that, so their magic number is 240.  How bad is it?  To put things in perspective, they decreased their Kindergarten classes from 3 to 2 this year because of lower enrollment.  That is their bread and butter for future growth….

So… Here is the bottom line….

IF……

• Charters can’t teach better.
• Charters can’t score better on standardized tests
• Charters can’t have few discipline problems
• Charters can’t have a high demand for seats,

Why do we still have this failed policy in place???  For just one school protected by the legislator who wrote the original legislation allowing Delaware to expirement with the then new innovation then called the Charter School theory?  He is, after all the head of the Senate Education Committee and he will have to be voted out or overridden by all other members to effect any change…

Why are we letting one person run the rest of Delaware’s public schools into the ground?  Even with one fifth of their income stolen from them, Delaware public schools are still the main choice of Delaware parents… Charters can’t even keep the minimum required number of seats filled?

This is why all need to send a donation to Dave Sokola’s opponent, Meredith Chapman.   If you live in the eighth, which runs the western border from Newark Charter School up to Hockessin, you lucky few get to vote to replace him.

 

Fed’s New Rules Will Force Revisit To SB 51: Sokola’s Death Star

As the Rogue Ones all gather their forces to defeat the dark monstrosity being built on the edge of their star system, they got a much needed assist from the Feds coming to their rescue.

It was anticipated that teacher colleges would need to provide proof of their graduates’ classroom skills in helping advance student learning, under proposed rules issued Nov. 25 by the U.S. Department of Education…

Programs that failed to do so could eventually be blocked from offering financial aid to would-be K-12 teachers in the form of federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education, or TEACH, grants, according to the long-delayed proposal.  The rules are the Obama administration’s attempt to toughen what have long been considered ineffectual requirements left over from “No Child Left Behind”, for teacher-preparation programs in Title II of the Higher Education Act…

The U.S. Department of Education yesterday released its long-awaited final rules on teacher preparation.

Under the rules, states will be required each year to rate all of its traditional, alternative and distance prep programs as either effective, at-risk, or low-performing….

The annual ratings will be based on several metrics, such as a) the number of graduates who get jobs in high-needs schools, b) how long these graduates stay in the teaching profession, and c) how effective they are as teachers, judging from classroom observations as well as their students’ academic performance...

This is in direct opposition to the thrust of Dave Sokola’s educational policies which have had the direct consequence of destroying public education, thereby elevating and illuminating Charter Schools as the more desirable.  His policies preclude running off teachers, they preclude closing schools, and they preclude holding public schools to low ratings while providing Charter Schools with high ones… 

As of today, the thrust of all those policies now take us in the wrong direction to get Title I funding.

• Instead of running teachers out of high needs schools, we need to get them to stay in high needs schools.
• Instead of helping the state achieve it’s educational goals, TFA (Teachers For America) now hinders the state from achieving its goals.
• Instead of making life hell on teachers in high needs schools, the state needs to all it can to maintain, grow, and prosper all those teachers in high needs schools. Every teacher in a high needs school  who quits, now endangers the income the state receives from the Federal Government. Free money that would need to be made up, if it were ever lost.

In a major change from the proposed rules—which were subject to heavy criticism from the field—student learning will not have to be based on test scores or the proxy of teacher evaluations based on student test gains; rather, states will have the flexibility to use other measures deemed “relevant to student outcomes” and determine how various components of their systems are weighted…

 

This is the exact passage which will require the tweaking of SB51 or now it would just be reworking Title 14, Chapter 12…Subchapter VIII – Educator Preparation Programs.…

e) Educator preparation programs shall collaborate with the Department to collect and report data on the performance and effectiveness of program graduates. At a minimum, such data shall measure performance and effectiveness of program graduates by student achievement. The effectiveness of each graduate shall be reported for a period of 5 years following graduation for each graduate who is employed as an educator in the State. Data shall be reported on an annual basis. The Department shall make such data available to the public.

(f) The Department shall promulgate rules and regulations governing educator preparation programs pursuant to this subchapter in collaboration with Delaware educators.

And here is the proper tweaking necessary to put Delaware’s Empire of Education, back under Inter-Galactic Law….. 🙂

e) Educator preparation programs shall collaborate with the Department to collect and report data on the performance and effectiveness of program graduates. At a minimum, s Such data measures performance and the effectiveness of educator preparation program graduates by student achievement. The effectiveness of each graduate shall be reported for a period of 5 years following graduation for each graduate who is employed as an educator in the State. Data shall be reported on an annual basis. The Department shall make such data available to the public. State mandated student test scores which have been proven to be ineffective determiners of teacher effectiveness, cannot be part of the evaluation process.

(f) The Department with the approval of the General Assembly, shall promulgate rules and regulations governing educator preparation programs pursuant to this subchapter in collaboration with Delaware educators.

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I look forward to these being put on the table in the first days of the new legislature…

For the timeline is thus… Under the rules, states must establish their reporting systems in the 2016-2017 school year, and can use the following school year to test out their systems. All reporting systems must be in effect by 2018-2019 school year.

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In another change from the draft rules, states will no longer be required to ensure that programs only accept top-performing students, as long as all students are held to a high bar by the program’s end. The aim here is to ensure that prep programs can recruit diverse candidates into the teaching profession.

Requiring another change in Sokola’s SB51 which is now

Title 14  Chapter 12…

Subchapter VIII.  Education Preparation Programs

• (b) Each educator preparation program approved by the Department shall establish rigorous entry requirements as prerequisites for admission into the program. At a minimum, each program shall require applicants to:

  (1) Have a grade point average of at least a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale or a grade point average in the top fiftieth percentile for coursework completed during the most recent 2 years of the applicant’s general education, whether secondary or post-secondary; or

  (2) (1) Demonstrate mastery of general knowledge, including the ability to read, write, and compute, by achieving a minimum score on a standardized test normed to the general college-bound population, such as Praxis, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), or American College Test (ACT), as approved by the Department.

  Each educator preparation program may waive these admissions requirements for up to 10 20%of the students admitted. Programs shall implement strategies to ensure that students admitted under such a waiver receive assistance to demonstrate competencies to successfully meet requirements for program completion.

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  Never underestimate the power …of the Force…..

 

Verdict Is In: Dropping Standardized Testing Is Good For Poverty And Minority Students

Data shows tests like the SAT are biased against students from low-income households.

Poorer students tend to perform worse on the test. The difference might be the costly prep courses, books and tutors, some experts say. Blacks and Hispanics also consistently score lower on the SAT than whites.The new thinking is that dropping the SAT requirement might encourage more low-income students to apply. But does it really increase diversity among enrolled students?

We have have the first trials…. Here are results of minority representation in each of these 4 year colleges before and after the test score became optional for admission…………

In 2011 Wake Forest dropped the SAT test as a requirement to entering their colleges. Before Wake Forest made its admission process test-optional for freshmen entering in 2009, about 18% of the students were non-white. The following year, the number jumped to 23% and it now stands at 30%.

The share of students from low-income households who are eligible for Federal Pell grants also shot up to 11% last year, compared to 7.5% the year before the policy was implemented, according to data provided by the school.

In other words the inherent bias of the test was preventing many students from achieving Pell Grants and being accepted into a school in which they could otherwise succeed….

At Marist College in New York, which dropped the requirement for the freshman class enrolling in 2011, the share of minority students has jumped from about 14% to nearly 18%.

At Franklin & Marshall College there has been a more modest increase in the share of minority students over the past decade. The school, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was one of the first to go test-optional. But it has seen a bigger jump in enrolled low-income students than some of the other schools: from 7% to 18%.

None of these schools had to water down their curriculum due to people entering schools based more on both their GPA’s and teachers’ recommendations, and less on a standardized test score that was inherently biased against them due to environmental factors of their upbringing…

The ability of poor and minorities to succeed in college is independent of their SAT test score…

If fact, these test scores were preventing good solid citizens from achieving their dreams ….

One would assume the Smarter Balanced Assessment actually takes that one step further…

Instead of simply limiting college choices, it now carries this same stigma right down to the tests in lower 3rd grade where these biased results now insist one must be dumber and not on par with those students with whom one in class equally competes, who all happen to be lily white and have rich parents…
Opting out of the Smarter Balanced should be mandatory for every poor and minority child in Delaware…   It is the ONLY way to achieve your dreams it appears……

Delaware Charter School Network Comes Up With A Viable Plan That Even I Cannot Argue Against….

Just released from a top secret Charter meeting between the principal players in this state as well as several larger corporations and the US Department of Education, is a new tactic that may actually be worth keeping Charters afloat in order to run this course to see if it would make a difference….

The plan is to allow pot smoking at all charter schools.  I know, but this is crazy enough to work… Follow the logic first and then make up you mind at the end.

A)  Charter’s Don’t Have To Follow Any Rules

Charter Schools are not bound by rules that public schools must follow.  This would make them the perfect laboratory in which to mix the placid effects of THC and the brilliance of unlocking the most powerful computer in the world, the human mind.

B)  Charter Schools Can Have Independent Financial Sources Other Than State Funding…

Originally designed so religions could put money into them, and later could investors as well, Charter Schools are allowed to have other funding methods than that of the taxpayer in that district.  So Charter Schools could fund themselves by selling marijuana on the open market, even becoming dispensaries of the medical version.  As we have seen in Colorado, this generates huge amounts of income… Period… Did I say HUGE?  The amount of money that goes towards marijuana is phenomenal and could certainly be tapped at Charter Schools to educate little children.  They could even sell to parents and offer in-school discounts just too keep enrollment levels up….

C)  Almost Everything Learned By  Everyone After Baby Boomers Was Learned Under The Influence Of Marijuana.

Whether as they retire these days, they were doctors, lawyers, policemen, government officials, priests, pastors, engineers, architects, MRI operators, Tractor Trailer haulers, fast food managers, grocery store cashiers, or DOE picks by Markell, the likelihood that everything they know was learned “under the influence” is remarkably high…

This means that it worked before, it can work again. People remember stuff when they take THC… Most children go through a whole day’s schooling and when you ask what they remember of it… they say… “nothing”… That can change instantaneously…   if we are truly concerned about retention, then we need THC-taking students absorbing full lessons..  immediately.  Charters are the best vehicle to accommodate that….

D)  Marijuana is cheap... when you take out the taxes and carrying costs for its former illegality.  it is essentially as cheap as grass… You know all those grass clippings you sweep up all summer?  Well, just as cheap as that to produce…  Schools could even grow their own and teach agri-economics to toddlers in a way even they could understand.   If one measures the profit that can be gleaned from something that costs nothing to produce, but will sell at stratospheric prices, one can readily see how Pot Producing Charters can pay for themselves and  full per student funding can remain in the resident public school districts as originally intended…

E)  School Should Be Fun.… grownups as well as children learn best when there is an emotional contingent enhancing their learning.  Play is important for small children because that is where 99% of their learning comes from… The other 1% is from Mom or Dad scolding them.   THC learning is pretty fun… At least from the stories Baby Boomers have been circulating since the early seventies, and the Beatniks from before that, one would think THC learning is the way to go…   Although public schools have too many restrictions and would require extensive political conditioning of the populace, as mention in the first section (A) above, charters not being bound by any rules could implement it immediately….

Bottom line should be about improving education… Charter Schools have completely failed America over the past 25 years of their implementation…  They are in the process of being shut down nationwide along the same way one would turn out the calvary to pasture once assured we were in the age of mechanical warfare.  Anyone who has faith in Charter Schools as they currently are these days, is probably smoking something… And that ironically could be the saving grace of Charter Schools in America today… And if, hitting up the THC hookah before every class, benefits American education overall, making us all wise beyond the capacity of Yoda even, then the real reason is…. why not?

And Wall Street which has so heavily invested in Corporate Run education?  They could invest in hemp farms instead….   It’s a Win, Win, Win situation where no one can ever lose, Lose, Lose….

It has my endorsement.  This is not satire. It is a serious proposition thought up in a late night meeting Saturday night and early Sunday morning by Delaware’s principal educational players and its Charter School Network…   who for whatever reason, may have gotten a good “hit” on the right solution….

What YOU Can Do To Fix Delaware’s Education…..

In writing a comment reply I almost tacked this on because it readily became apparent to me why despite Delaware’s education apparatus being in fairly good shape, we are beset with a battering of how f’d-up our local schools are… As any parent knows, their school is not f’d-up and ESPECIALLY when you put an assortment of parents across the state in a room and ask questions, you readily discern there is a dichotomy between how they feel about their  child’s school, versus the generalities of the state’s running this or that educational program…

The gist being that generally all education is f’d-up; but somehow their schools are awesome…

It is time to shoot the messenger….

Dave Sokola initiated the charter school process back when the first Clinton ran the White House… Particularly now that charters have a black eye, he has used the Educational committee to sneak lobbyist-written legislation through passage and a fellow Newark buddy’s signature to give Charters exceptional rights and access which no one else has…

What ever his reason, that is on him.. (It is not “the children”; his policies have made their lives hell).. But as Delaware citizens we have a choice this November to put our school bickerings on a back burner and move forward with improving the quality of education directly at the student level,….. OR we can continue to have the same confrontations that always say the same things on both sides, that are a back and forth of nothing that has not already been said…

Talk is cheap… As with your children, as with the upkeep of your house, as with the constant health of your car and your own body, if you want to get something done, you have to take the initial action yourself.

There is a wonderful human being named Meredith Chapman now challenging Dave Sokola for his 8th District Senatorial seat… a territory that covers the northeast corner of our state from Newark to Hockessin .

If she is able to knock off Dave, then our constant blather of racist inspired public school battering (they simply don’t want to go to school with blacks…Period),  evaporates… In its place we have a clear day with bright sun to actually turn attention to what helps children…

We know.

Exactly.

What helps children…

If we seriously want to improve education, we need to have an 11:1 student teacher ratio in grades k – 5 and in grade 9 in all schools where over 50% of the student body is at or below poverty level….

This applies what works best to those areas that need work… Nothing else is as effective… Nothing.  The best way to motivate people to learn, is to have someone they admire who knows them and mentors them to learn.  In wealthy districts that role can well be filled by parents.  Therefore wealthy districts don’t need as much attention.. But when you have a child entering the school system behind by a 5000 word vocabulary, you have to do something first to catch them up, and then you have to continue a process that continually advances them forward so at some future point in their lives, they enter the workplace on parity with those who were given a now very lucky head start in life…

There are four other things that must be done but in truth all those four are done solely to allocate necessary resources to the only tried and true method of teaching…. One on one involvement…. 11:1 is manageable.

This will NEVER  happen as long as Dave Sokola is in the Senate…  You’ve had 25 years of watching him go THE WRONG WAY!

And like a pinned flea, so far he has squirmed his way out from being caught, and slipped to bite public education at their hair follicles again and again… Across 25 years our fingers just couldn’t seem to grasp the blood engorged body to pull it out of the coiffured entanglements of our educational apparatus… So we accepted it instead… and after every bite, we scratch our skin raw..

We got bitten again, again, and again, and again, and again… (Did I hit the right number or legislative pieces? )..

This time we have tweezers in the form of Meredith Chapman.  Time to get that little bugger OUTTA THERE!….

 

They Were Right Back Then; They Are Wrong Now. The Reality Of What They Warned Us Against, Is Taking Place Right Before Our Very Eyes…….

Court Seal Put On Whistleblower’s Account of Coleman’s SAT Wrongdoing

It takes a little sleuthing to figure out what happened.

In a nutshell the game was up when Manuel Alfaro, who was the executive director of assessment design and development at the College Board went online at Linkdin and posted some cryptic messages.  Over time this was his story.

Coleman brought him in a month after his takeover of  SAT by Common Core. Coleman to meet test deadlines simply transferred Common Core’s material over to the SAT data base and had hired Alfaro to create a fake research and development operation to get around copyright laws… Basically his job was to make it look like it was not stolen.

The test was published and distributed before being proof read.  Proof readers were eventually hired but after the test had been sent out… The May 2016 test was this test, it is the one Juniors took in Delaware to determine… whatever…  Small problems in this test were wrong answers marked as right ones, or no correct answer available among the 5 options. Bigger problems involved the “fake” questions now regularly inserted in such tests which do not count towards the score and are only there to test their quality for use in future tests.  These inserted questions were so difficult and time consuming, they prevented students from finishing the test.  Hence the scores of May 2016 will be lower than years past.

However Alfaro though he lived through it, does not have the tests. Therefore he was appealing to several states including Delaware, to use the transparency clauses in their contracts to bypass the College Board’s proprietary restrictions and have them find the questions, answers, and details to back up what he lived through…

His computer has been confiscated by the FBI.  Now, because of this court case, a gag order has been levied upon him and all involved and all relevant documents have been put under court seal.

Simultaneous to this, Reuters is reporting on an East Asian cheating scandal involving the SAT and PSAT  Apparently there is only a small pool of questions which many firms-for-hire to boost scores, already have.  They teach the questions and answers and their customers score very high on these tests.  Sourced out of East Asia Reuters was given 400 of the current questions from an outside source and sent copies of them to the College Board to confirm they were legit.  The College Board pleaded with them not to publish these actual questions and answers since they were the only questions in use this school year.

Bottom line: anyone looking for reassurance that the SAT is a better test under Coleman will be very disappointed.

As Reuters says… the test has never been worse….

“200 hundred items were sent to the Content Advisory Committee for review. Their feedback was scathing. One committee member wrote an 11-page document letting the College Board know that these were the worst items he had ever seen. In the past, he had not seen the worst items because they were rejected due to poor item statistics. In fact, the usual 15-20 percent of the items that are pretested and are rejected due to poor performance, were on the May 2016 test used to hold students and teachers accountable.”

Graduation After 10th Grade

Like every new idea, ones defenses go up… “Whoa there, buddy…. ”

Except for sports careers, it kinda does make sense….

We ask children who’ve finished learning, emotionally, psychologically, (and for the most part) biologically, to stay on-board for two years of “extra” curricular activities which when we reflect back on our years, all of which we learned academically in those two years, rarely get used today…. (sex is a different story).

Before you jump the shark, recognize this:  that if we keep the final two years optional… (by making them years to opt-in on), we also make them preferential which tends to allow discipline to be internally enforced by each student who chooses to continue onward ( ie, the reality of being kicked out is a real negative; it is no longer something to brag about)…

Here’s why. The issue I hear from High Schools today, and this involves input from students, faculty, parents and administrators, boils down to this:  that a lot of young adults in the upper grades do NOT WANT TO LEARN….  Every negative aspect stems from that single ubiquitous elephant in the room:  discipline problems, lack of personal respect, work ethic, mental alertness, focus, fights, productivity, lack of motivation, etc. …

And every time a round table discusses how to improve high school performance, someone (this is true) inevitably says:  if only we could cull those who don’t want to be there, most of our problems would go away… Sigh:  but that will never happen……………………………….”

So what I’m asking:  is…. why can’t that happen?

Rule 1:  Every child must be in school till age 18.

In society, this is a relative new rule.  When there is no solid structure supporting society adulthood entry levels move downward, usually settling around somewhere in the low teens, correlating with puberty for the most part…  Romans married off their children at 13. That was also the age of dissolving parent-child bonds in the Middle Ages on the continent of Europe.   Native Americans, both North and South, also became adults then…

Obviously there must be precedent: our own Common Core Standards stop measuring before reaching the upper grades.

So, instead of forcing people who for multiple reasons do not want to continue schooling to go against their will through the motions of being schooled, what if we provided an alternative?

For example what if we allowed them to work at something on the scale of our military, which was the template for the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps?  Those men like the military, stayed in camps, had discipline structure,  meals and lodging provided, and worked hard (physical labor) for a dollar a day…  When they were ready to leave, they had a nest egg on which to begin. Today, we should do $20 a day.

Yes. It would take planning to iron out details.. We would need input from a variety of societal perspectives to discover just the right mix.

But, a 16 year old could be given the option, based on his past feeling over his 11 years (counting kindergarten) of public schooling, to decide whether or not they wanted to start work, or go to college… Their growing brain would continue learning, just not stuff that was irrelevant to them…

And if someone ever made the wrong choice by staying in classes inappropriate for them, and became consistently disruptive or violent, there would be a ready option available outside of public schooling into which we quickly place them.

After all for our first 200 years, most of America’s success was built on the backs of Americans who did not finish high school…

This solution would solve or at least dilute many of high school’s problems.

• Disruptive Classes
• Fewer Discipline events
• Poor Work Ethic
• Disrespect for Authority
• Low test scores (that are meaningless to those who care not.)

 

And there is a model. In a corporation when one has a division of ones company that is not adding to the bottom line but taking from it, one sells it off.  As soon as the transaction occurs, ones results improve…

Why not use that same model in high school and make grades 11 and 12 elective? By simply having an alternative, most students will choose to continue to opt-in, willingly continuing their free public education because is serves in their best long-term interests to do so…

Once they’ve gained this realization, their whole attitude changes….

Because the entire problem with High Schools today is that we force them to deal with people who DON’T want to be there (like prisons)…  And I don’t know about you, but my High School was not like that. That type of element was just not around.

I’m proposing we make this happen in our schools …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Racism, Prejudice, and the KKK

Amazingly, there still continues to be some confusion, as I’m sure back during the Reconstruction Era when white supremacists first insisted that black voters take some type of “smarts” test before entering the voting booth, there was confusion among many Afro Americans at that time who thought having tests of knowledge was indeed a good idea…

History proved who was right; and who were wrong.  When you give someone trying to keep your race down, the tools to do so, they will use them and your race will be kept down.

That is why it is hard for many of us in educational circles to understand how any Afro-American can be in favor of using the Smarter Balanced Assessment to grade their child…

Because unlike 1890 when literacy tests were begun, today all have information on what these tests are… 

Let me show you a picture of racism in 2016….

This is Delaware’s official ELA target.  (Click image to enlarge.)

Whites have to grow from 61.5 to 80.8… a total of 19.3 points….

Asians have to grow from 77.1 to 88.5…..a total of 11.4 points…..

Blacks have to grow from  35.8 to 67.9….a total of  32.1 points…..

Hispanics have to grow from 39.0 to 69.5… a total of 30.5 points…..

Low incomes have to grow from 34.2 to 67.1…. a total of 32.9 points…

Disabilities…. have to grow from 19.3 to 59.6…. a total of 40.3 points…

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Pure racism. Fully endorsed by the KKK…. Hear them now?   “YEAH!!!!  That’s what we’re talkin’ about…..”

(Don’t blame me; I’m not even the messenger…This is from the DOE website…)

 

This is Delaware’s target.  (Click image to enlarge.)

Whites have to grow from 49.2 to 74.6… a total of 25.4 points….

Asians have to grow from 70.7 to 85.4…..a total of 14.7 points…..

Blacks have to grow from 22.0 to 61.0….a total of  39.0 points…..

Hispanics have to grow from 28.6 to 64.3… a total of 38.7 points…..

Low incomes have to grow from 23.8 to 61.9…. a total of 38.1 points…

Disabilities…. have to grow from 15.0 to 57.5…. a total of 42.5 points.

 

Can anyone tell me how this is any different than guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar?  Whites have to show a 51.6% improvement… Blacks have to show a 177% improvement… Might as well label blacks as disabled: 283%

What is being said here, disguised as an attempt to elevate blacksscores, is that they have to jump through a different hoop than the rest of us… why?  Skin color, of course…..

No ifs. No buts. No ands…

There are proven ways to raise the results of our lowest scoring children. Corporate types flat out do not want the right answer proven to be effective over and over and over again..  I have covered it so many times, it is pointless to do it again. But for now, rest assured.  This way, shown above?….  Leads us nowhere…..

Except to make the KKK very happy….. 🙂   Can you hear them?

“Hooray, Hooray,  Blacks will be second class citizens again.. Whoopee!  Toast!  Celebrate!  Yeah, Greg Lavelle* and all the other supporters of the Smarter Balanced Assessment!!!  Hip, Hip, Hooray!”

 

 

 

Exposing Common Core To The Public

This is a homework assignment given to one Delawarean student. I published this before, but since many are now tuning in for the first time, here it is again…. The original story began with how a student was upset they would not be covering Shakespeare this year. When a parent asked at open house, the answer was: “We’re doing common core this year. It is a very structured learning process. We won’t be reading literature this year”. This is what they read instead.

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“Inventory” was almost here. Miguel had to count all the product on his shelves. He didn’t have time. In the morning deliveries came and had to be stocked and rotated. Once he opened his doors, he had to handle customers, and never was a time that no one was in the building. Then in the evening, he had to stay to make sure his evening shift was running smoothly. His assistant came in at five, and Miguel would wait to make sure all staff was present and accounted for, that no manpower shortages would occur, and that all equipment was working properly, before he could leave. He started every day at 5 am…”

DISCUSS THOROUGHLY

ANALYZE CORRECTLY

WRITE THE NEXT SENTENCE

VOCABULARY

inventory
deliveries
customers
assistant
accounted
manpower
shortages
properly

WHAT IS THE KEY POINT OF THIS PARAGRAPH

WHAT IS THE AUTHOR TRYING TO SAY

WRITE A 5 PARAGRAPH TEXT ON HOW YOU WOULD SOLVE MIGUEL’S PROBLEMS.

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From Shakespeare to this….. Welcome to Common Core, ladies and gentlemen.