Pony Show Drops Its Mask. The Ugly Face of Propaganda

I've already read the Propagandist Cover up on this -- They are putting out the message that the Teachers were not invited to talk.. when in fact.. on Jan 07th, the Group that was organizing this made a really big deal about this being a discussion.

http://nevadajournal.com/2015/01/08/expert-critics-common-core-face-nde-officials-unique-public-events/

So then today, The Newsrelease is this:

Open/Edu Continues to Grow

Open Education Taking Whole Cities at a Time

Discouraged with the Texas State School Board, and their Indoctrination Curriculum, and the only available school books being erroneous (at best), El Paso schools knew they had to do something to protect their students. What? And How? were the issues though.

How could they supply, with the little budget they were given, materials, lessons and books for the whole city? Where would they get them? It really didn't look good. Even if they were willing to accept used books that were out of date, they couldn't find the quantity they needed in time. Then they discovered cK-12, an OpenEdu collective and repository. cK-12 supplied them with full curriculum, books, materials and a huge repository of lesson plans, all fully Core compliant. cK-12 also introduced them to the vast resources that OpenEdu could offer them, and showed them the level of development these resources offered.

No International Benchmark? No Valid Source of Credibility?

Is That what he told you?

The Movement for National Academic Standards: A Comparison of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in the USA and the National Curriculum in Australia
Watt, Michael, Oct 2-4, 2009 ERIC Number: ED506524
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED506524

Benchmarking standards against state, national and international standards, using a research-based process for decision making, reviewing successive drafts by stakeholders, and conducting an independent validation characterise the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Specifying plans and guidelines, inventing and refining standards, using a consensus-building process for decision making, and reviewing successive drafts by stakeholders characterise the national curriculum initiative in Australia.

Jason Zimba reports (in the New England Journal of Public Policy)
http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/27851

... there were fifty-one people in the Mathematics Work Team, twenty-two people in the Mathematics Feedback Group, and twenty-nine people on the Validation Committee. The project lead for mathematics was William McCallum, a mathematician and University Distinguished Professor at the University of Arizona. Zimba himself is a Mathematical Physicist, or was at the time. So there is a lot of people involved with the math standards in 2009, all the way through 2011.

2007 Susan Pimentel started with the International Reading Association and published a book with them , "Teaching reading well: A synthesis of the International Reading Association's research on teacher preparation for reading instruction." This was basically her "understanding" being peer reviewed before she started with the project.
http://www.reading.org/Libraries/reports-and-standards/teaching_reading_well.pdf

And here I find that under the leadership of Dr. P. David Pearson, PhD, of the University of California at Berkeley,(Who is, by the way, the acknowledged, absolute authority on Comprehension -- how we learn stuff) the International Reading Association (IRA) created the Literacy Research Panel (LRP) to respond to critical literacy issues facing policymakers, school administrators, teacher educators, classroom teachers, parents and the general public. So not only are Coleman and Pimentel benchmarking, they've pulled together a large team of many levels and view points to make the standards.

And this is a fully Independent International Benchmarking of CCSS done without anyone knowing about it until it was over, by sneeky researchers at Michigan State.
Curricular Coherence and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics 
 William H. Schmidt1 Richard T. Houang11 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 
  Educational Researcher November 2012 41: 294-308, 
doi: 10.3102/0013189X12464517 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER November 2012 vol. 41 no. 8 294-308 
http://edr.sagepub.com/content/41/8/294

As a point of Interest it is also listed as one of the most read documents in 2014 -- so it has been very deeply peer reviewed.
http://edr.sagepub.com/reports/most-read

What have I told you about listening to strangers? Check the Primary Source, not the idiot on stage.

Stress?

Common elementary math textbooks in the U.S. cover almost twice as many topics per grade as do Singapore’s. As a result, math textbooks in Singapore expect students to complete about one thorough lesson on a single topic per week, while U.S. students are expected to complete about one lesson on a narrowly focused topic each day.

Everyday stress after stress after stress.
                     -or-
Four High Stress Tests a Year

Hey, I'm still good with the Opt-Out.

In Singapore, schools use a national examination to identify upper elementary grade students who are having difficulty in math. Those students then receive
special instruction based on an adapted curriculum framework taught by trained Mathematics Support Teachers. Importantly, they also receive about 30 percent more math instruction than their peers so that they can cover the same rigorous content, only at a slower pace.

Common Core Demagoguery Has Breached

I really thought we were done with this. The ones to blame however are not the Republicans or the BATs -- but those who run CCSS, and the Dept of Education for not running an Education and Awareness campaign a year ago, or in October -- to educate the public about Common Core, what it is, what it isn't and remove the opposition's ability to just step back into the misinformation spewing.

What a year though, huh?

Teachers faced scrutiny in 2014 as never before, thanks to a landmark legal case dismantling teacher tenure in California, which sparked copycats lawsuits across the country. If you aren't familiar with this - it was a lawsuit brought against the school teachers/unions dealing with the Tenure of teachers which allowed bad teachers to not be identified and fired. Or at least that was the Press. The students felt that they were not given an education, which should have been expected. Yes, it should have been expected. When you have the high percent of students coming out of High School that we had, who had a diploma, but were not qualified to move on to college, it should be expected that one or nine of them are going to say, "Hey, WTF?"  And they sued for Failure to fulfill the expected obligations of an education system.

They won.  -- that, wasn't, actually expected...

Never thought I'd Say this Again

As I shuffle from one level of insanity to another I wonder how these people think this stuff up? It's hard to ask, because there is this thing that is common among the Anti-Core websites -- they don't have comment sections with their articles. There is no way to ask them-- um.. what? And there are a number of questions I have- like the Opt-Out.

From what I gather, people wish to Opt their child Out of Common Core teaching, and have them be taught in ... special ed classes ... under a standard that what? What they were being taught before? So, the parent is saying,

"I don't want my little girl to be subjected to college and career-level teaching. Teach her that stuff from 1998. It was good enough then, it is good enough now." -- Mississippi Parent of three beautiful children.

And you know what? I'm cool with that option. Sure. Let's all stop this bickering and everyone push for the Opt-Out Special Edu for those who want it. Problem solved.