Sunday, May 13, 2012

School-Standards Pushback

This from WSJ.com
STANDARDSThe Common Core national math and reading standards, adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia two years ago, are coming under attack from some quarters as a federal intrusion into state education matters.

The voluntary academic standards, which specify what students should know in each grade, were heavily promoted by the Obama administration through its $4.35 billion Race to the Top education-grant competition. States that instituted changes such as common learning goals received bonus points in their applications.

Supporters say the Common Core standards better prepare students for college or the workforce, and are important as the U.S. falls behind other nations in areas such as math proficiency.

A 2010 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning educational-research group, said the Common Core standards "are clearly superior to those currently in use in 39 states in math and 37 states in English. For 33 states, the Common Core is superior in both math and reading."

But conservative lawmakers and governors in at least five states, including Utah and Alabama, recently have been pushing to back out, or slow down implementation, of Common Core. They worry that adoption of the standards has created a de facto national curriculum that could at some point be extended into more controversial areas such as science...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are you telling me that when the federal government offerred to give some states back their citizen's tax dollars if they wrote a big report promising to make big educational standards but now that they have gotten the money, they are not doing what they said they would. Sounds like the states are demonstrating their own learning as modeled by the federal government. So tell me is it the state governments or federal governments which take your tax dollars and then don't follow through on what they promise, demonstrate a lack of accountability and take on a condesending, self righteous attitude toward those they are suppose to be serving. I know one group it isn't and that's the educators in our schools.