Common Core Standards--Parents Need To Ask Why Is There No Debate?
Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 09:26PM Part I
No More Local School Boards or State Boards? Who will parents go to when state and local school boards no longer have input !
"How can the State Boards of Education make decisions when they haven't even read the standards? Many state's Board Member had never been initiated into what was in these documents. What were the policy issues coming out of these documents and whether these analyses were truly were in a sense legitimate academic analysis-- a really serious issue of uninformed Boards of Education in this country which they would never do on most other issues. These are very serious issues about what self- government means at the state and local government level."--Sandra Stotsky, professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and holds the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality.
State Board Member, Betty Peters, says this sounds like a back door entry for a complete control of the federal government. Many states voted before the final standards came out in June. Race to the top grant money was an enticement so many states voted early on to accept the common core standard when they werent even completely finished. Texas said no to it.
"There are two separate automacity requirements for all of the algorithms--one is their own construction and then the other is the standard algorithm. Standard Algorithm always come a year or two later and so these students are going to learn their own way of doing things many of which are incorrect and then they're going to learn the standard algorithm and they're going to get totally confused. The net effect in terms of learning is that they know neither approach verywell. The second set of things-- the requirement to automaticity on their own self- invented algorithms was one of the political issues that came in at the last moment and it's absolutely crazy. And then there was an entire list of similar ones, that equally made no sense whatsoever in terms of the long term development of children's mathematical capacity." -- Dr. R. James Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University.