Common Core Standards

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The education system is already centralized, and to the best of my understanding Common Core doesn't really move much beyond that.

It enhances centralization. It's another step in the wrong direction.

Before, states set their own standards, and now, states have agreed to adopt a common standard. There's no punishment that I know of for opting out. There could be one, but I'm not finding it.

Race To The Top money, withheld or not.

I don't really see what the additional intrusion is.

Nationally-applied curricular standards.

Applying the question somewhat differently, people do (IMO) have expectations for what a high school graduate should know. Nevertheless, standardized tests were mainly developed to hold educators accountable, not students.

Internal accountability mechanisms fall to regulatory capture. Parents would hold education service providers accountable in a competitive market in education services.

The Obama Administration wasn't thrilled to have 50 states with 50 different standards ...

Maybe they don't like the color of my tie. That's none of their f'n business. See the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution (not that Obama cares for Constitutional limits on his authority).

... but as far as I know states drove the adoption of common standards.

See here.

The standards movement was born out of fear that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge due to lax schooling. I've seen conflicting reports on how well-founded that fear is.

The US State-monopoly K -12 education system is a mess. When Grandma has cancer, snake-oil salesmen emerge from the woodwork. These guys make the illness worse.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

It sounds like your complaint is about efficiency and your solution is to opt out? Or is the complaint about the democratic process not being authoritarian enough, with too many voices having input? Still, the solution you have found is the same - not to participate. Unilateralism is a great move when it's available.

Word salad. Aimless. Except I guess for the horrible epithet "unilateralism". Lol.

What I don't understand is whether you think your move should be broadly applied because the public school system isn't to your liking, or was it a custom fit to meet your own frustrations?

Try reading what I wrote.

And on a side note, how did you figure out what you would and wouldn't teach your kid(s)?

It was extremely difficult and I can't tell you how much time I put into this every day. Hours upon hours. 27 hours a day if I am adding correctly.

The alphabet, for example: it took seven years to make that decision and I went to numerous conferences with experts in thirty-two fields. My wife and I almost got divorced over it because it was so controversial. Numbers too - I am thinking we'll make that decision on whether to teach them after we're done with vector calculus, or maybe string theory.

Really, it is incredible to hear the accusations of irresponsibility, insinuations of child abuse, the claim institutions were necessary to eliminate violence, the preposterous notion we and our children are incapable of interacting with people from public schools - and here, asking how we decided what to teach.

This just tells me you have spent ZERO time thinking about it yourself and are guided by the principle that since you have never even thought about it that it must be some difficult problem. To me, this is like asking how I would make the decision about how to stock the house with food.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It sounds like your complaint is about efficiency and your solution is to opt out? Or is the complaint about the democratic process not being authoritarian enough, with too many voices having input? Still, the solution you have found is the same - not to participate. Unilateralism is a great move when it's available.

What I don't understand is whether you think your move should be broadly applied because the public school system isn't to your liking, or was it a custom fit to meet your own frustrations?

And on a side note, how did you figure out what you would and wouldn't teach your kid(s)?

Why don't we conduct a nationwide vote on next Monday's dinner menu? What's the point of centralization?
The term "the government of __A__ (locality)" names the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber).
Much earlier ...

I offer the decision of the size and style of shoe as one of the many choices that are most obviously NOT appropriate material for aggregated decision making. Do you intend to suggest that it is?

I have asked many times in this thread and others the following two questions:
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine a dichotomous classification A = {x: x in an unlikely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} and B = [x: x is a likely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} or a continuum .................
(highly unlikely) -1_______.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What criteria determine an industry's classification or position on the continuum?

The authoritarians are the people who insist on inviting the goons with the guns to intrude into areas where they contribute nothing and have no Constitutional authority.

And on a side note, how did you figure out what you would and wouldn't teach your kid(s)?

Is the decision for whom to vote for School Board easier?

 

[marplots]

Word salad. Aimless. Except I guess for the horrible epithet "unilateralism". Lol.

So you'll be hiring a tutor for the English portion then?

I'd offer to help, but I'm not qualified. My daughter, however, is. She is trained to teach ESL and does it for homeschoolers as well as adults.

The primary complaint of adult learners with poor English skills (she tells me) is that their lack of a solid education limits their opportunities. Granted, this is a small segment of the population - a group that cares enough to take action instead of falling into the niche society has selected for those with poor skills.

 

[marplots]

Why don't we conduct a nationwide vote on next Monday's dinner menu? What's the point of centralization?
The term "the government of __A__ (locality)" names the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber).
Much earlier ...The authoritarians are the people who insist on inviting the goons with the guns to intrude into areas where they contribute nothing and have no Constitutional authority.Is the decision for whom to vote for School Board easier?

I should have mentioned I was in the US. I can see things are rather more dramatic where you reside. Apologies.

 

[kellyb]

I agree that our "state monopoly" ( ) education system is inferior to those of other many countries (My favorite "state monopoly" system is Finland's.) I think the Common Core standards are a step in the right direction, though.

For example, the "Singapore Math" curriculum is wildly popular among homeschoolers because it works and is evidence based. The Common Core math standards are very, very similar.

 

[marplots]

For example, the "Singapore Math" curriculum is wildly popular among homeschoolers because it works and is evidence based. The Common Core math standards are very, very similar.

That can't be right. It would mean homeschoolers are relying on expert input to determine curriculum. I recently read that experts were the problem in the first place.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I agree that our "state monopoly" ( ) ...

In many US States, State constitutions give to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel (the "public" schools) an exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy. They qualify as a monopoly.

The "Singapore Math" curriculum is wildly popular among homeschoolers because it works and is evidence based. The Common Core math standards are very, very similar.

Common Core defenders keep saying that Common Core is not a curriculum.

Just what do we get from any government presence in the education industry?

Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 1994-July

... the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.

Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

Eduardo Zambrano
"Formal Models of Authority: Introduction and Political Economy Applications"
Rationality and Society, 1999-May

Aside from the important issue of how it is that a ruler may economize on communication, contracting and coercion costs, this leads to an interpretation of the state that cannot be contractarian in nature: citizens would not empower a ruler to solve collective action problems in any of the models discussed, for the ruler would always be redundant and costly. The results support a view of the state that is eminently predatory, (the ? MK.) case in which whether the collective actions problems are solved by the state or not depends on upon whether this is consistent with the objectives and opportunities of those with the (natural) monopoly of violence in society. This conclusion is also reached in a model of a predatory state by Moselle and Polak (1997). How the theory of economic policy changes in light of this interpretation is an important question left for further work.

 

[kellyb]

That can't be right. It would mean homeschoolers are relying on expert input to determine curriculum. I recently read that experts were the problem in the first place.

There have been some really amusing (to me) debates about that on the homeschooling forums.

Some US homeschoolers who HATE all things government in the US, but love Singapore Math (which was created by math education EXPERTS in the Singapore GOVERNMENT), are very upset about Common Core, and simply confused by the fact that those (Singapore) standards are becoming "mainstream" in the US as Common Core.

On the bright side, there are also a lot of homeschoolers who are pretty much thrilled with Common Core. We tend to be the ones who assume it's quite possible that our kids will be in public schools someday, and don't homeschool out of a "all government is EVIL, anti-competition, and experts are STUPID" philosophy.

 

[Minoosh]

You are exactly the kind of example showing how easy it is to make up malicious manipulative rhetoric to attack anyone who is different from the average.

According to you, someone from outside your state contacted child-welfare authorities. I don't know how that could have happened without you broadcasting your identity, and you children's identity, over the Internet.

And yes, we hear this mainly from other parents who get uber defensive about how far ahead our kids are than theirs. They say exactly the same thing, along with "pushing" the kids "before they are ready".

They say exactly what thing?

I've never said squat about pushing kids before they're ready.

You want to conjure up an image of putting electric wires on their genitals, horse whips, and of course make us into bug-eyed loons (weird).

Oh my God. Do you realize this says volumes more about you than it does about me?

Oh, and yes I am ready to hear you deny that this is what you are doing. My eyes are deceiving me.

Well, since you brought it up ... yes, I do believe your contact with reality is suboptimal. You have introduced imagery of bizarre, sexually sadistic practices. Your kids may be fine, I don't know, but you are not convincing me that Father always knows best.

What a bizarre turn this thread has taken. I wasn't looking for a fight. I was looking for informed opinions about Common Core, since it will probably affect my professional life. I learned some things in the process so thanks, everybody.

 

[kellyb]

Just what do we get from any government presence in the education industry?

There was a time, not too long ago, when a vast majority of the population could not read at all. Total illiteracy was extremely common just a few generations ago.

US kids are doing poorly compared to kids in the other "education state monopolies" (aka, all the other countries on Earth), but all of the state schools globally are doing wonderfully compared to the old "learn from your parents, or have a tutor" default.

 

[Minoosh]

Race To The Top money, withheld or not.

If the U.S. is going to have nationwide standards, someone has to hash them out. Race to the Top, part of the main 2009 stimulus bill, awarded seed money to get states competing to see who could produce the best standards for career and college readiness. Judging from amounts awarded, this may have averted education layoffs when state economies imploded in 2008.

Race to the Top was probably in effect a jobs bill.

The standards arrived at seem reasonable but IMO there will be technical issues with implementing it over the next year.

Parents would hold education service providers accountable in a competitive market in education services.

So you say. My impression is that home-schooling's reputation suffered due to a perception that parents were using it to keep kids from learning about evolution. I know cases that confirm that perception, but they are only anecdotes.

There are people who want to propagate the belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old and will presumably skew science education to encourage that belief.

I have no idea if this is a realistic concern. Two-thirds of responding homeschoolers indicate they do it in part to further religious instruction. (That used to be the leading reason cited). IMO that is the core of sentiment on this board against homeschooling and whatever you call your view. Libertarian is close enough for me.

In the 1930s many Chinese thought you had to scare the moon away during an eclipse, while the West knew better. Do we want to reverse those roles? That's what some people perceive to be at stake.

The US State-monopoly K -12 education system is a mess. When Grandma has cancer, snake-oil salesmen emerge from the woodwork. These guys make the illness worse.

Now, about Common Core:

Which do you think is more important when asked to find where a line intersects a parabola (the solution(s))?:

- Realizing the quadratic formula always works, even though it's a "brute force" exercise in factorization.
- Spotting a common factor on each side, which greatly simplifies the calculations while yielding identical results.

Fortunately either gets full credit, but the PARCC math exam has questions that will require human graders. The old bubble format didn't. Will this delay timely efforts to remedy instruction, and how would this affect the class of '15?

Also, do you think it matters that the PARCC assessment is going to be entirely Web-based, when some schools do not have supporting infrastructure?

And, will there be a hiatus from high-stakes testing as state tests are phased out and PARCC phased in? When, if ever, will passing PARCC become a graduation requirement? Some states have already scrapped former test systems. Lucky cohorts of students might not have to take any test at all.

These questions interest me more than rehashing generic anti-public-education arguments. Perhaps we shouldn't have national standards at all but there is widespread, bipartisan buy-in for that position, even if it did originate with LBJ.

When Americans want to phase out the public school system I suspect they will.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Just what do we get from any government presence in the education industry?

There was a time, not too long ago, when a vast majority of the populationcould not read at all. Total illiteracy was extremely common just a few generations ago.

That's the History of Education that State schools teach. According to Edwin West, before the government of Great Britain compelled attendance, most of the sub-adult population got some schooling. As West wrote, when the State got involved it "jumped into the saddle of a galloping horse".

In the pre-Revolutionary British colonies of North America, some colonies had compulsory attendance statutes on the books and some did not. The first compulsory attendance statute, (search "That Old Deluder, Satan act") in North America entered the books in 1644 (iirc), in the Congregationalist colony of Massachusetts Bay. The reason given in the "whereas" preface is not that children were not learning to read and not that they were not learning vocational skills but that their parents were neglecting religious instruction.

Religious colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut) compelled attendance at school. Commercial colonies did not. Ben Franklin attended school for two years in Massachusetts between age 10 and 12. Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, never attended a government-operated school.

US kids are doing poorly compared to kids in the other "education state monopolies" (aka, all the other countries on Earth)...

No. Belgium, Belize, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Singapore subsidize options outside of the State-operated school system. In Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the Netherlands, a majority of students take tax subsidies to independent or parochial schools.

... but all of the state schools globally are doing wonderfully compared to the old "learn from your parents, or have a tutor" default.

a) Those are not the only options.
b) Independent and parochial schools consistently outperform government schools. Homeschoolers regularly outperform conventionally schooled children.

I recommend:...
Milton Friedman, "The Role of Government in Education"(Chicago University Press, 1962)
Myron Lieberman, Privatization and Educational Choice (1989)
Chubb and Moe, Politics, Markets, and America's Schools(Brookings, 1990)
E. G. West, "Education Without the State"(1994)
Sheldon Richman, Separating School and State (1994)
E. G. West, "Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice, a Survey" (The World Bank Research Observer, Feb. 1997) Behind a paywall.
Andrew Coulson, Market Education, The Unknown History (1999)
Steuerle, Ooms, Petersen, Reischauer (eds.) Vouchers and the Provision of Public Services (Brookings, 2000)
Enlow and Ealy, Liberty and Learning: Milton Friedman's Voucher Idea at Fifty (2006)
James Tooley, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves (Cato, 2013)

Governments do for education what the Soviet government did for nutrition in Ukraine from 1929 to 1933.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

yes, I do believe your contact with reality is suboptimal.

lol. When you call people crazy, you've proven you don't have a leg to stand on.

And yes, of course I expect you to deny that is what you are saying and blame it on me instead. I have a lot of experience with manipulative people, and this is standard practice: to attack with an ad hom like this and then play both blame-the-victim ( you are the one calling yourself crazy, not me) and play the victim yourself: oh, poor Minoosh was not looking for a fight - people should just agree with him and accept his ad hominems instead of starting a fight.

I notice you don't give any citations whereas Malcolm's posts are overflowing with them. All I have spoken to is my own family, which you address with personal attacks. But in your discussions with him - you aren't much of a "professional" as you claim if you don't actually use literature.

 

[Minoosh]

There was a time, not too long ago, when a vast majority of the population could not read at all. Total illiteracy was extremely common just a few generations ago.

I appreciate that you can see benefits of the school system while still deciding to teach your kids at home. It can be so much fun working with small groups. The traditional 7-12 setup does not permit much individual attention.

By watching my mom tutor an older brother I learned enough to skip 2nd grade, so in a sense I was home-schooled.

Common Core emphasizes the connections among different aspects of math, which I believe is good. I notice the grade-by-grade alignment disappears after eighth grade - there is one HS math standard. There's also a fairly common sequence of high school math instruction and some students will be taking tests that aren't aligned to that sequence. I suspect exit exams will be put on hold for a year or two.

BTW: If I had a 2nd grader I'd invest in a $10 mobile app called Dragon Box - the 12+ version, not the 5+. There's also a new geometry app.

More about Dragon Box:
http://www.wewanttoknow.com

 

[Minoosh]

lol. When you call people crazy, you've proven you don't have a leg to stand on.

I considered it a red flag when you introduced lurid fantasies of genital torture, but maybe that's just me.

I've also never called you crazy. I have questioned your perceptions and your judgment.

In general I'm not a big fan of posting a lot of family information online, especially when kids are involved.

oh, poor Minoosh was not looking for a fight - people should just agree with him and accept his ad hominems instead of starting a fight.

I'm female. If you are prone to fantasies you might as well get that right.

All I have spoken to is my own family, which you address with personal attacks.

I want to make clear, I am not attacking your family. I wish all of you the best.

But in your discussions with him - you aren't much of a "professional" as you claim if you don't actually use literature.

There's a reason I don't emulate Malcolm's Wall o' Cites technique. He has the citations ready-made for ongoing discussions in perpetual-motion threads with titles like, "Does compulsory public education equal slavery?"

Usually I'm not debating these larger issues. In general I'm looking for information on best practices for teaching grades 7-12 math, with the assumption that our current system will be in place for a while yet.

There's not a whole lot of "literature" about the relative merits of competing math methods. Not a lot of quantitative data on "what works." I'm interested in students, they can tell, and I'm always on the lookout for better ways to engage them. I don't have the traditional job of teaching 150+ kids in five or six daily classes. It's worth it to me to work for less pay and no benefits, if I can keep up the work with small groups.

Which is why I agreed with quite a lot of what you said in your earlier posts. Then there was a fairly abrupt shift in tone. JREF doesn't tolerate the typical "yer an idiot, no YER an idiot" style of debate, which is nice, but there may be better forums for discussing things like the technical issues involved in implementing Common Core.

 

[Dancing David]

This is an important deception peddled by the democracy-fetish crowd. Why, all you have to do is go to the school board... as if that would have any effect...

varies from area to area, people going to the BOE meetings here have a large impact. And in general parent calls are taken very seriously... with the caveats of unreasonable requests can't be met.

Still among the 16 different building, parents are listened to very strongly, not all requests can be met still an effort is made in most cases.

We have 10,000 students and are about as responsive as we can be.

It is not a fetish, it is the way our district works, now strangely smaller districts vary in their level of response.

 

[Dancing David]

You want to conjure up an image of putting electric wires on their genitals, horse whips, and of course make us into bug-eyed loons (weird). Oh, and yes I am ready to hear you deny that this is what you are doing. My eyes are deceiving me. But this is exactly what we learned from the published researchers. It doesn't take intelligence to do this. What it takes is bad intentions.

Wow your continual projection and hyperbole makes your arguments seem exaggerated and over the top.

Bye now

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

There's a reason I don't emulate Malcolm's Wall o' Cites technique. He has the citations ready-made for ongoing discussions in perpetual-motion threads with titles like, "Does compulsory public education equal slavery?"

All of the cites I provided above relate directly to the issue of markets versus State provision of education services. I addressed Kelly's point.

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”--George Orwell

Students who don't "get it" on the tenth repetition may get it on the eleventh.

Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery.
Compulsion kills motivation.

Someone interested in "best practice" would take note of the role that competition between providers of goods and services plays in incremental improvements.

Usually I'm not debating these larger issues. In general I'm looking for information on best practices for teaching grades 7-12 math, with the assumption that our current system will be in place for a while yet.

There's not a whole lot of "literature" about the relative merits of competing math methods. Not a lot of quantitative data on "what works."

There's quite a lot. Read Coulson's discussion of Project Follow-through.

Common Core Math is to effective Math instruction what Whole Language methods of Reading instruction are to phonics.

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."--Alfred North Whitehead

 

[marplots]

(much snipped)
All of the cites I provided above relate directly to the issue of markets versus State provision of education services.

Who is the customer?