Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Video criticizing Common Core - a bit disturbing!

oh wow. Impassioned plea indeed! Would have been better if he didn't read his entire speech; but the message is loud and clear.

Just clicked here and oh my! That kid is from my old high school.

Because of Common Core, these parents pulled their kids out of math class for an hour a day for home instruction.

KTVU News

I saw somewhere that they (unsure who "they" are, exactly) are having a "ditch day" today to protest Common Core. I gather that it was something they wanted to go viral, though it may have only been one area right now.

It was, IMO, a classic example of a speech designed to manipulate through emotion. And that young man is a classic example of what is wrong with American education: too much stuff and too little substance.

That's what I found disturbing... I haven't had time to look into yet but a co-worker and I were wondering if that were true.. It isn't?

Bingo, Val.

I ran across this criticism of this movement courtesy of a rather annoyed Arne Duncan, and frankly, I laughed out loud.

Arne Duncan: White Suburban Moms upset that Common Core shows their kids aren't brilliant.




Yes, yes, yes.

Criticism about the implementation is one thing. But most of these parents ranting and raving about Common Core are just mad that their precious snowflakes don't look so good now that actual standards are involved.

I personally have some concerns about CC-- I think that you'd have to be a little crazy the OTHER direction not to-- but they aren't because I think that the standards are: a) too rigid, or b) too high. Nor are my concerns based upon the idea that there should NOT be national curricular standards, which I think are an awesome idea. I'm more worried about the corporate players that are involved in the implementation phase of things, developing and copyrighting curriculum, testing-testing-testing, etc, with no free market to regulate quality.


The comments on this op-ed are particularly biting/insightful. I highly recommend those, too.

Well, guess I'll delete most of what I was about to post. Val has summarized it succinctly.

But here are some of my additional thoughts on the general topic:
Having grown up in a military family it was sad to see kids coming from other school systems being held back a year because where their dad was stationed had standards almost a grade behind my school's standards. Having a target that works from state to state makes sense to me. At some point having a clear content collection across topics that shows how a typical college bound student can get a sufficiently rich education so that the professors don't go off whining about the quality of incoming students makes sense. Personally, I'm a little concerned that there isn't an identified basic skill track that parallels the common core's college bound track, but that's a different topic.

It is most emphatically NOT true. It was a blatant baldfaced lie.

The math standards committee was heavily composed of mathematicians. It was headed by this guy (William McCallum), head of the math department at the University of Arizona. Look at his CV (link on the left) if you doubt his math credentials. The co-chair is a professor of math and physics at Bennington College. Then there are Hung-Hsi Wu, a professor emeritus of mathematics at UC Berkeley and Roger Howe, a mathematician at Yale.

The list of committee members is listed here. It's composed of mathematicians and educators.

I know an astrophysicist at San Jose State who told me that one of his colleagues was involved in writing the science standards. Etc.

These standards are serious and were written by people who know their subjects. Finally, we get a meaningful and serious attempt at fixing the schools in this country, and the idiots willfully ignorant people out there are doing everything they can to undermine it. My biggest fears about the Common Core are that the schools and the textbook companies won't be up for them.