Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion to conform or not to conform

Speaking as someone who parses Diane Ravitch's site daily I'd disagree a bit with that characterization. The common core standards were written by an idiosyncratic small group of experts mostly hand picked by the Gates Foundation rather than a systematic or representative group of accepted leaders in the fields affected. The process was also mostly opaque and did not have an adequate revision process. See:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2009/07/national_standards_process_ign.html

On top of that, despite from the outside the idea that in the abstract early learning is a non-contentious subject, there are a ton of long standing battles over from constuctivism in math to close reading/phonics in language arts. Its very possible to examine them solely from the pedagogical standpoint and find serious criticisms.

For example: http://danielskatz.net/2014/09/19/dear-common-core-english-standards-can-we-talk/

Diane Ravitch is lying. See this piece on the development of the standards. Quotes here:



Two periods of public comments that garnered 10K comments that were used to shape the standards is hardly "opaque," nor does it constitute "inadequate revision."


Again, none of this is opaque and it all speaks to extensive revision by a lot of people who were thinking carefully.

I found this information after a brief Google search. The same page I linked to has a detailed timeline describing how the standards were conceived, designed, and written. There were so many organizations involved, I can't list them all here. Did the Gates Foundation handpick umpteen organizations?

The Common Core has been politicized, and people like Diane Ravitch obfuscate rather than clarify. Speaking politely, this is unethical.

I worked for Pearson out of Chandler ,Az...the amount of revenue generated compared to given back to the community was astonounishing and I love the company for that. They love the idea of moving forward but some things that aren't broke shouldn't be fixed.

I am proud when my children appropriately challenge authority. Most often, this may be a quiet aside with the teacher rather than holding the rest of the class hostage but sometimes it is necessary for the rest of the class to be involved. I remind them that their absolute rights end where others' rights begin so they need to exercise good judgment. This is not purely altruistic as it is part of developing necessary social skills and to avoid becoming pariahs. Like Bostonian pointed out, chaos serve no one. It's also a balancing act since no one child's right to constant questioning trumps all the other children's rights to classroom instruction and practice.

As for Common Core (at least the standards themselves), I am a conformist not because I am a sheep but because I believe that it is good particularly for the poor performing states to be held to a higher standard. Of course, the implementation of Common Core in some states/districts has been problematic and there is the additional political issue of the federal government using funding to "coerce" states to comply.

Ultimately though, it simply boggles the mind the vast difference between the education in a high performing state versus a poor performing one. I feel so sorry for all the kids that are getting such substandard education due to where they live because it is hard to catch up in college, particularly if they end up attending a competitive university.

Maybe I'm just weird, but I don't see a conflict between "asking questions" and "respecting authority."

I think asking questions undermines authority and causes confusion and delay.

But if it helps students understand the lesson isn't that part of teaching? They want kids to "explain the how" of getting an answer but they don't want to explain why. If my out of nowhere wanted me to change a process ( which happens constantly in mortgage) they explain why. I could tell my kids they have to brush their teeth because I said so and it will cause a power struggle but when I explain why its important they don't fight me on it.

And let's say a new law is implemented saying you have to have blonde hair and when you ask why their answer is "because we said so". I don't see many people accepting that as a valid answer.

Educational achievement differences across the 50 states are not primarily due to differences in the quality of schools in those states. Students in California now rank near the bottom in both reading and math. That was not true a few decades ago, and I don't think it was because the teachers or curriculum in California deteriorated more than in the rest of the country during that time span.

If we moved from MA to a state that does worse on tests, I don't think our children would get substantially dumber.

I'm in Arizona where they are cutting budgets every year for education but throwing more money into high rises and administration costs of big companies. Our teachers get paid less here and have bigger class sizes than the norm.