Common Core Math has to be the stupidest idea conceived in American education

[Topspin Shot]

Proof please. You can keep your plan if you like it.

The Tea Party is a staunchly conservative movement. This fact alone means someone associated with the movement is not a credible source. Note that the same would go for a left-wing source. On the other hand, your post is a non sequitur.

EDIT: "Associated with" may not be exactly the right phrase. More like "associated with and speaking on the behalf of."

 

[Avles]

Avles, the sensible thing to do is to take the poll with a grain of salt. Take it easy.

Max, polls have all kinds of potential issues, but they're still a decent gauge of what people actually think at a national level. That's especially the case if you can look at multiple polls on the same topic.

Here's another poll that asked the evolution/creation question a different way: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

And here's another: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/bill-nye-on-evolution_n_3875364.html

So the percentage giving the most "creationist" response varies from 33% to 42%, which is a pretty big range-- but not big enough that I see any reason to accept the idea that only a "tiny fraction" of Americans are creationists. That assertion seems at odds with all available evidence.

Also-- while it is true that creationist ideas are much more pronounced among Evangelical Protestants (as opposed to mainline Protestants), that doesn't mean that creationists are fragments and particles of the population. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest religious affiliation in the US.

 

[movdqa]

This is the truth. My wife has teached 25 years in public schools and we have a daughter in them. The problem is parents who don't care. The best public schools are the ones with a lot of parent involvement, and the best students are the ones with parents who are fully engaged.

I've seen this over and over again. Furthermore, I grew up in public schools, good ones and bad ones. I went to six elementary schools, 2 middle/junior high schools and two high schools. We had little money and moved around a lot. But I was a good student and made good grades because my parents made sure of it. Some of those schools were good and some bad, with teachers the same way.

The public schools haven't failed American kids, sorry parents have.

In the Finland model, the parents don't matter that much but they produce among the best educated students in the world according to the Pisa standard. They do require very high qualifications for teachers though. This is an argument against the criticism of parents that are unable or unwilling to do a good job parenting.

I generally disagree with these arguments but it is hard to argue with their success.

Singapore was an island that was kicked out of Malaysia about 60 years ago and they wanted to move from a third-world country to a first-world country. They have largely succeeded with education as the backbone. You need to raise a generation that becomes parents to get them to the point where they support education but Singapore also requires high qualifications for teachers. I visited one of their primary schools many years ago and what was amazing was how little staff they had compared to a typical US school. I couldn't find anyone to talk to because it seemed like all of the staff was teaching at the time.

Now you may want parents to change the schools but the parents' primary job is to ensure that their kids are educated to whatever definition of educated you consider reasonable. We happen to be a democracy though and schools are usually run by school boards which are composed of elected officials. So school boards are what the voters vote for. This can be good or bad and good or bad can depend on what you think a public school education should be.

You might run for school board, get elected and find out that there's a huge amount of inertia and red tape and government regulation at the state and federal levels that govern a lot of what you can and can't do. You might join a school committee and find out how slow things really move.

Or you may simply disagree with the methods of teaching used in your local schools and not have the political clout to change it.

Remembering all the while that you have to get your kids educated and that time doesn't stand still for you to make changes to your local school district. There is a call for parents that want to use private schools to use public schools instead because the schools need those parents but those parents may not feel that their presence will fix problems in a timely manner for their kids.

You can look at the disparities between what wealthy districts spend on education and what the typical district spends. Money doesn't always buy you better education but it seldom hurts. You can hire better teachers and give them a reason to stay and provide more facilities and extracurricular activities that develop the whole child.

 

[movdqa]

The Tea Party is a staunchly conservative movement. This fact alone means someone associated with the movement is not a credible source. Note that the same would go for a left-wing source. On the other hand, your post is a non sequitur.

That's pretty odd reasoning.

They (anyone) presumably have citations to back up their assertions and you can just go to base materials to see if they support what the person is asserting. In this particular case, what the video purports to demonstrate is reasonable as I've seen that approach, though not in such a verbose way, in school textbooks. The use of arithmetic manipulations where you add something and subtract it later is one of many tricks in the bag of the problem-solver and you might use it in something like deriving the quadratic formula.

One thing that people affiliated with the Tea Party do share is that they are generally wealthier and better educated than the general population. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the source for that.

 

[Steady Eddy]

The truth is the negative change is partly technological (kids aren't reading much these days) and partly we're getting more low IQ people.

I thought it was the opposite. That IQs are rising, the Flynn Effect.

 

[max]

Max, polls have all kinds of potential issues, but they're still a decent gauge of what people actually think at a national level. That's especially the case if you can look at multiple polls on the same topic.

Here's another poll that asked the evolution/creation question a different way: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

And here's another: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/bill-nye-on-evolution_n_3875364.html

So the percentage giving the most "creationist" response varies from 33% to 42%, which is a pretty big range-- but not big enough that I see any reason to accept the idea that only a "tiny fraction" of Americans are creationists. That assertion seems at odds with all available evidence.

Also-- while it is true that creationist ideas are much more pronounced among Evangelical Protestants (as opposed to mainline Protestants), that doesn't mean that creationists are fragments and particles of the population. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest religious affiliation in the US.

and of course many evangelical Protestants believe in evolution. Look, fellow, you can believe whatever fits the political dogma you're putting into yourself. In reality, the number of people who believe the world began 10,000 years ago, and that "creationism" is the real story, is tiny. Don't be confused by the scape-goating and strawman kicking of religion that's been done in recent years: millions upon millions believe evolution can reasonably include God. So it goes. Peace out.

 

[movdqa]

and of course many evangelical Protestants believe in evolution. Look, fellow, you can believe whatever fits the political dogma you're putting into yourself. In reality, the number of people who believe the world began 10,000 years ago, and that "creationism" is the real story, is tiny. Don't be confused by the scape-goating and strawman kicking of religion that's been done in recent years: millions upon millions believe evolution can reasonably include God. So it goes. Peace out.

The Gallop Poll page was actually in error in the opening paragraph.

The poll question was actually about being "within 10,000" years. Not exactly 10,000 years. That the introduction disagreed with the poll question is a bit of a concern.

I think that his references are valid though. Gallop is non-partisan. Bill Nye the Science Guy is a staunch believer in evolution. At a gross level, he's provided sufficient evidence for his claim. You're free to look up other polls, and sources of research so that you could come to the same conclusion or find something different. That's a standard part of research - the literature search.

 

[Don't Let It Bounce]

In the Finland model, the parents don't matter that much but they produce among the best educated students in the world according to the Pisa standard. They do require very high qualifications for teachers though. This is an argument against the criticism of parents that are unable or unwilling to do a good job parenting.

I generally disagree with these arguments but it is hard to argue with their success.

A part of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers that sticks with me is his mention of a study of American students from various economic strata. The short version is that students both poor and wealthy progressed at about the same rate throughout the school year. After summer vacation, however, there was a statistically significant performance gap between them, and the gap widened with each year. Either the original source or Gladwell (I don't recall which) attributed the difference to a greater emphasis in wealthier households on reading and academic development.

I don't know if Finland has the long summer break – it's a strange legacy of American family agricultural practices – but if they don't, that may help explain how they minimize parental (negative) impact on academic development.

...no more knowledge of mathematics than can be acquired at a primary school or even at Eton.

Has anyone ever slipped the knife in as smoothly as Bertie?

 

[Topspin Shot]

That's pretty odd reasoning.

They (anyone) presumably have citations to back up their assertions and you can just go to base materials to see if they support what the person is asserting. In this particular case, what the video purports to demonstrate is reasonable as I've seen that approach, though not in such a verbose way, in school textbooks. The use of arithmetic manipulations where you add something and subtract it later is one of many tricks in the bag of the problem-solver and you might use it in something like deriving the quadratic formula.

One thing that people affiliated with the Tea Party do share is that they are generally wealthier and better educated than the general population. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the source for that.

Where are these base materials? If they exist, they should have been posted here, not the Tea Party website. The video seemed to be designed to produce the outcome it did. Are the actual students being taught in the exact same way as the video subjects were presented the concept? If not, the video proves nothing. And the Tea Party members being educated thing is a red herring.

 

[movdqa]

I don't know if Finland has the long summer break – it's a strange legacy of American family agricultural practices – but if they don't, that may help explain how they minimize parental (negative) impact on academic development.

I've generally read that Finland has less schooling than most countries. They don't start school until kids are 7.

Some facts from Business Insider:

Compared with other systems, they rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.

The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for "professional development".

Finland has the same amount of teachers as New York City, but far fewer students.

 

[movdqa]

Where are these base materials? If they exist, they should have been posted here, not the Tea Party website. The video seemed to be designed to produce the outcome it did. Are the actual students being taught in the exact same way as the video subjects were presented the concept? If not, the video proves nothing. And the Tea Party members being educated thing is a red herring.

I think that someone posted an arithmetic example of manipulating digits to simplify the operation earlier in the thread.

In general, you post a link to research and the research has the citations though a lot of research on the web will only give you access to an abstract and you have to pay for the actual article. I don't doubt that they did the video based on something that they got out of a textbook because I've seen some pretty convoluted stuff in textbooks - well, it appears convoluted until you figure out what they are trying to do.

In Suppes' Sets and Numbers, they introduce different number bases and that sort of thing seems pretty ridiculous unless you have a math, computer science or electrical engineering degree. I think that the materials in Suppes' Mathematical Logic for the Schools could be ridiculed as well unless you studied philosophy. Suppes is Professor Emeritus at Stanford and found the Education Program for Gifted Youth which now also has an online high-school. My last correspondence with him was probably 15 years ago and he was in his 90s at the time.

If you want an example of something that sounds convoluted though, do the exercise of developing the quadratic formula. The ideas are not that different from the ideas in the video. The particular example that they used of 32-12 was not a particularly good example because it is easy to solve without an alternate approach.

 

[dParis]

If you took the time to educate yourself about logic, you would know that attacking the messenger is only a fallacy when the attack is not relevant to the topic at hand. In this case, Maximagq started a thread on education and cited a Tea Party website as his only source. Tea Party sources are politically biased and are known to engage in misrepresentation. In short, they are not credible sources and should not be used to prove or argue in favor of a point. It is well within the confines of sound logic for me to say what I said.

You are going to have to re examine the concept of sound logic. Thank you for proving my point.

It's perfectly possible to have a discussion of the new way of teaching maths, but the topic was introduced only as a part of a right wing diatribe about public schools.

That's exactly what the link showed. Nothing more. Full stop. You, and a couple of like minded sheep, were the only ones making political diatribes. Show me where, in that link, the Right Wing was shoving religion down suresh's throat. We know that's impossible though, because suresh's throat is perpetually filled with jelly doughnuts. Show me the Right Wing diatribe. Better yet, take all of your prejudices and just crawl back into your hole. The day your permaband comes down will be too long in waiting.

 

[dParis]

The Tea Party is a staunchly conservative movement. This fact alone means someone associated with the movement is not a credible source.

Well then, it should be very easy to discredit the content. Go ahead.

 

[bad_call]

You are going to have to re examine the concept of sound logic. Thank you for proving my point.


That's exactly what the link showed. Nothing more. Full stop. You, and a couple of like minded sheep, were the only ones making political diatribes. Show me where, in that link, the Right Wing was shoving religion down suresh's throat. We know that's impossible though, because suresh's throat is perpetually filled with jelly doughnuts. Show me the Right Wing diatribe. Better yet, take all of your prejudices and just crawl back into your hole. The day your permaband comes down will be too long in waiting.

you really told them...lol

 

[Topspin Shot]

Well then, it should be very easy to discredit the content. Go ahead.

Frankly I don't have to. I didn't claim anything about Common Core. For all you know, I agree that Common Core math is overly convoluted. But the OP made a very strong claim, which means it's on him to back it with reliable sources. A Tea Party blog, or nearly any other blog by a nonexpert in the field for that matter, is not reliable enough.

 

[Bartelby]

You are just defending your own politics via turgid personal abuse and not even bothering to discuss the purported topic.

That's exactly what the link showed. Nothing more. Full stop. You, and a couple of like minded sheep, were the only ones making political diatribes. Show me where, in that link, the Right Wing was shoving religion down suresh's throat. We know that's impossible though, because suresh's throat is perpetually filled with jelly doughnuts. Show me the Right Wing diatribe. Better yet, take all of your prejudices and just crawl back into your hole. The day your permaband comes down will be too long in waiting.

 

[Bartelby]

For better or worse, the new pedagogy seems in line with the Zeitgeist's emphasis on individuality, group work and application rather than confromity, rote learning and textboook examples:


The standards don't toss out the basics, like memorizing multiplication tables or knowing basic math facts like simple addition or subtraction: 2 + 2 = 4.

But overall, the standards include the application of knowledge - like knowing when one would use multiplication or being able to explain different ways to solve a problem. Instead of grinding through 20 problems, students are more likely to come together in teams to work through one or two scenarios.

That's how it's done in the highest performing countries, like Japan and Singapore.

"The Common Core standards are meant to show people what students should know and be able to do," said Peter Williamson, associate professor of teacher education at the University of San Francisco. "I think that we've come from an era of scripted curriculum materials ... of teachers being told how to teach and what to teach. The Common Core is asking us to step away from that and to teach without those scripts."

 

[movdqa]

Frankly I don't have to. I didn't claim anything about Common Core. For all you know, I agree that Common Core math is overly convoluted. But the OP made a very strong claim, which means it's on him to back it with reliable sources. A Tea Party blog, or nearly any other blog by a nonexpert in the field for that matter, is not reliable enough.

Common core is disliked by teachers and many conservative and libertarian parents and a combination of people on the left and right not liking is usually a sign that it might not be a good way to go.

Unfortunately there are many that are pretty heavily committed to it and it seems hard for them to back out of it now.

I think that an example from a Common Core textbook would probably provide for a sufficient argument. I am not willing to spend $90 on something like this (I bought a whole set of 1980s math textbooks from K-8 in the 1990s and bought numerous algebra, trig and other textbooks; I have over a dozen calculus textbooks on my bookshelf too but our kids are almost through college so I don't feel a need to bother with primary school stuff unless I'm asked for help from parents with school-aged kids).

In doing a little reading, there area groups from all over the political spectrum with complaints about Common Core and these are pretty hard to dismiss though the business and political leaders spearheading it are trying pretty hard. The amount of corporate backing for Common Core is a little surprising.

 

[Bartelby]

Anything new is an opportunity for large profits by the corporate publishing and educational world, so corporate backing does not surprise me.

 

[pinky42]

The video is cherrypicking a bad example on purpose. It reminds me of the Jaywalking skits on Leno where they only choose to show the stupid answers. Entertaining, but useless for trying to prove a point.

Sometime it's better to use the standard technique and other times it's better to reformulate the problem. For example, what's 2594 + 999? You could add the digits and do all the carries, or you could add 1000 and subtract 1. Always blindly using the standard technique will get to the answer but it's not always the best path.

 

[NLBwell]

The right wing doesn't care about education. They want to discriminate against groups of people, discourage girls from aiming high and instead get married as soon as possible and drop all ambitions, harass gay students, and impose their sick version of religion on everyone.

Just because there are two viewpoints doesn't mean both are to be given respect.

Given the overall stupidity of people due to centuries of religious brainwashing, it takes special effort to make them civilized.

sueshs, I hope this is a joke emphasizing the silliness of the leftist point of view and the attacks on those who are not fully invested in radical left ideology. Is anyone really stupid enough to believe something like this?

In asking the above question, I just realized it is very possible. It took hold in Germany in the 1930's, as well as the Soviet Union. Mao used these tactics to rationalize killing tens of millions in China. Racists (Democrats) used tactics such as this to dehumanize blacks in the U.S. These tactics of the radicals putting people in groups and dehumanizing ones they don't favor are exactly what you are falling for. Be careful, favored groups change. It used to be white males, now it is non-whites and women. They supported people like the ones who drove a spike in Richard Williams' leg. When Israel was more socialist, the left loved it, not the left crusades in support of it's annihilation. Groups that Mao or Stalin favored changed from time to time and the results were deadly to those not favored.
Be careful, when you divide people into groups and de-humanize them, you can be on the receiving end someday. It is only by treating everyone respectfully as individuals - the American ideal - that we succeed in not warring with each other.

 

[Topspin Shot]

Common core is disliked by teachers and many conservative and libertarian parents and a combination of people on the left and right not liking is usually a sign that it might not be a good way to go.

Unfortunately there are many that are pretty heavily committed to it and it seems hard for them to back out of it now.

I think that an example from a Common Core textbook would probably provide for a sufficient argument. I am not willing to spend $90 on something like this (I bought a whole set of 1980s math textbooks from K-8 in the 1990s and bought numerous algebra, trig and other textbooks; I have over a dozen calculus textbooks on my bookshelf too but our kids are almost through college so I don't feel a need to bother with primary school stuff unless I'm asked for help from parents with school-aged kids).

In doing a little reading, there area groups from all over the political spectrum with complaints about Common Core and these are pretty hard to dismiss though the business and political leaders spearheading it are trying pretty hard. The amount of corporate backing for Common Core is a little surprising.

To be honest, I don't know enough about Common Core to formulate a strong opinion on it. A CC textbook would definitely be a good source to learn about it, but I wouldn't spend the money on it either. Just because the left and right dislike CC doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, but I agree that the degree of corporate backing is disconcerting.

 

[Topspin Shot]

sueshs, I hope this is a joke emphasizing the silliness of the leftist point of view and the attacks on those who are not fully invested in radical left ideology. Is anyone really stupid enough to believe something like this?

In asking the above question, I just realized it is very possible. It took hold in Germany in the 1930's, as well as the Soviet Union. Mao used these tactics to rationalize killing tens of millions in China. Racists (Democrats) used tactics such as this to dehumanize blacks in the U.S. These tactics of the radicals putting people in groups and dehumanizing ones they don't favor are exactly what you are falling for. Be careful, favored groups change. It used to be white males, now it is non-whites and women. They supported people like the ones who drove a spike in Richard Williams' leg. When Israel was more socialist, the left loved it, not the left crusades in support of it's annihilation. Groups that Mao or Stalin favored changed from time to time and the results were deadly to those not favored.
Be careful, when you divide people into groups and de-humanize them, you can be on the receiving end someday. It is only by treating everyone respectfully as individuals - the American ideal - that we succeed in not warring with each other.

N-azi Germany was right-wing. So were the Democrats who dehumanized black people (with the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson, who was liberal in some areas but conservative on civil rights). Mao and Stalin were left-wing. The point is that extremists on both sides have caused a lot of agony in the world.

 

[Overdrive]

Oh dear...

 

[NLBwell]

N-azi Germany was right-wing. So were the Democrats who dehumanized black people (with the possible exception of Woodrow Wilson, who was liberal in some areas but conservative on civil rights). Mao and Stalin were left-wing. The point is that extremists on both sides have caused a lot of agony in the world.

Statism, government control, and dividing people into groups were all elements of 1930's Germany and the segregated South as well as Communism. It was government that put in segregation because it helped get politicians elected (it was a negative to business). Whether you call it left-wing or right-wing doesn't really matter. These things are now the call of the radical left here in the U.S., but tyrants and dictators of all stripes use them around the world.
You are right, it is the extremists who cause much of the agony in the world. The tool of the extremist is de-humanizing the opposition. Everyone should beware of falling into that trap.

 

[movdqa]

To be honest, I don't know enough about Common Core to formulate a strong opinion on it. A CC textbook would definitely be a good source to learn about it, but I wouldn't spend the money on it either. Just because the left and right dislike CC doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, but I agree that the degree of corporate backing is disconcerting.

I agree that it isn't necessarily bad. What I've read is that the idea of standards is generally good but there's a big step from writing the standards to implementation and the textbook that this video was derived from may have been a bad implementation.

Part of the strength of the US education system has been the diversity and that came from state standards and local standards and implementations but repeating the work for 50 states or all of the school districts has a degree of inefficiency.

We fortunately don't have to deal with this stuff with our kids - maybe with our grandkids if we ever have any; but the products of these standards and implementations are going to hitting the real world in the next generation.

 

[WildVolley]

I've generally read that Finland has less schooling than most countries. They don't start school until kids are 7.

Some facts from Business Insider:...

Finland is also full of Finns.

It can get extremely controversial extremely quickly, but in general, comparing different ethnic groups doesn't necessarily tell you much. Look up the "achievement gap" in the United States to see how there is a wide variance in achievement by different ethnic groups in the United States. That's even when we're talking about students in the same school, using the same material as presented by the same teachers.

 

[Topspin Shot]

Statism, government control, and dividing people into groups were all elements of 1930's Germany and the segregated South as well as Communism. It was government that put in segregation because it helped get politicians elected (it was a negative to business). Whether you call it left-wing or right-wing doesn't really matter. These things are now the call of the radical left here in the U.S., but tyrants and dictators of all stripes use them around the world.
You are right, it is the extremists who cause much of the agony in the world. The tool of the extremist is de-humanizing the opposition. Everyone should beware of falling into that trap.

Remove the red, and your post makes a lot of sense.

 

[Topspin Shot]

I agree that it isn't necessarily bad. What I've read is that the idea of standards is generally good but there's a big step from writing the standards to implementation and the textbook that this video was derived from may have been a bad implementation.

Part of the strength of the US education system has been the diversity and that came from state standards and local standards and implementations but repeating the work for 50 states or all of the school districts has a degree of inefficiency.

We fortunately don't have to deal with this stuff with our kids - maybe with our grandkids if we ever have any; but the products of these standards and implementations are going to hitting the real world in the next generation.

Very good point.

 

[Algo]

You are going to have to re examine the concept of sound logic. Thank you for proving my point.


That's exactly what the link showed. Nothing more. Full stop. You, and a couple of like minded sheep, were the only ones making political diatribes. Show me where, in that link, the Right Wing was shoving religion down suresh's throat. We know that's impossible though, because suresh's throat is perpetually filled with jelly doughnuts. Show me the Right Wing diatribe. Better yet, take all of your prejudices and just crawl back into your hole. The day your permaband comes down will be too long in waiting.

Yeah, because it's just a technical reading and it's not at all "contaminated" with political views. One should always read between the lines and not just stick to what easily comes to surface.

That's the problem with extremes, they don't see their own thoughts as political but as "the truth"

 

[dParis]

Frankly I don't have to. I didn't claim anything about Common Core. For all you know, I agree that Common Core math is overly convoluted. But the OP made a very strong claim, which means it's on him to back it with reliable sources. A Tea Party blog, or nearly any other blog by a nonexpert in the field for that matter, is not reliable enough.

I didn't ask you to discredit Common Core. I asked you to discredit the content of the link. What you think about the header on the blog is off topic and irrelevant. You, I and everyone reading this thread knows that if everything in the link remained the same but for the removal of any references to the Tea Party, we'd be having a very different conversation.

Statism, government control, and dividing people into groups were all elements of 1930's Germany and the segregated South as well as Communism. It was government that put in segregation because it helped get politicians elected (it was a negative to business). Whether you call it left-wing or right-wing doesn't really matter. These things are now the call of the radical left here in the U.S., but tyrants and dictators of all stripes use them around the world.
You are right, it is the extremists who cause much of the agony in the world. The tool of the extremist is de-humanizing the opposition. Everyone should beware of falling into that trap.

Your post makes a lot of sense.

 

[Bartelby]

You don't know what you are talking about at any level!

Have you had any university training in political science?

What newspapers and magazines do you read?

Do you realise that if you define things too broadly everything will indeed seem the same.

Every country with a state could be statist.

Every country has governmental control.

All governments divide people into groups because they have different support bases and orient their policies accordingly.

Segregation was undoubtedly popular and required little political campaigning.

The truce on the front line in world war one resulted in the British confiscating cameras from their own troops and a renewed propaganda campaign against the 'beastly hun'.

And this is before we get to the current demonisation campaigns by the so-called democracies.

Statism, government control, and dividing people into groups were all elements of 1930's Germany and the segregated South as well as Communism. It was government that put in segregation because it helped get politicians elected (it was a negative to business). Whether you call it left-wing or right-wing doesn't really matter. These things are now the call of the radical left here in the U.S., but tyrants and dictators of all stripes use them around the world.
You are right, it is the extremists who cause much of the agony in the world. The tool of the extremist is de-humanizing the opposition. Everyone should beware of falling into that trap.

 

[Topspin Shot]

I didn't ask you to discredit Common Core. I asked you to discredit the content of the link. What you think about the header on the blog is off topic and irrelevant. You, I and everyone reading this thread knows that if everything in the link remained the same but for the removal of any references to the Tea Party, we'd be having a very different conversation.

You fail to understand that I don't have to answer any of these questions. The burden of proof is not on me. It's on the OP who made the initial claim, and he must provide a reliable source to back up his claim. He didn't do that. Read this excerpt, and learn something from it http://books.google.com/books?id=7Z...X&ei=7fQMVJfnDJHaoATK_oHwDA&ved=0CCsQ6AEwBjgK

 

[WildVolley]

Ignoring the political debate, my guess is that the CC standards will not bring about any statistically significant increase in US math performance on standardized/international tests.

The problem is that 1) the CC math standards have not been empirically demonstrated to be superior to the current standards, and 2) it will probably take about 8 years to assess them.

On the other hand, textbook publishers will love selling new CC textbooks and education think-tanks already love the $s Bill Gates has given them to support CC.

The 'conservative' position is to bet that like most of the reforms in the past two decades no statistically significant improvement will be seen.

 

[movdqa]

Finland is also full of Finns.

It can get extremely controversial extremely quickly, but in general, comparing different ethnic groups doesn't necessarily tell you much. Look up the "achievement gap" in the United States to see how there is a wide variance in achievement by different ethnic groups in the United States. That's even when we're talking about students in the same school, using the same material as presented by the same teachers.

So perhaps we have better results with a homogeneous population.

Singapore goes the opposite route with a lot of work and parents starting kids at a young age and enrolling them in extracurricular activities. They have four main races: Chinese, Malay, Indian and European and four main religions. In most parts of the world, that would result in conflict but they have a fairly peaceful, controlled society. And an excellent education system. They typically rank very highly on the TIMSS tests.

So you can have great results, even in a diverse population. MA did quite well in the TIMSS tests and MA is a pretty diverse state. But MA does seem to have more of a law and order mentality than many other diverse states.

 

[dParis]

You fail to understand that I don't have to answer any of these questions. The burden of proof is not on me. It's on the OP who made the initial claim, and he must provide a reliable source to back up his claim.

You fail to understand that we all know you're full of it; and yours is only a reflex caused by seeing the word "tea" followed immediately by the word "party".

 

[movdqa]

Ignoring the political debate, my guess is that the CC standards will not bring about any statistically significant increase in US math performance on standardized/international tests.

The problem is that 1) the CC math standards have not been empirically demonstrated to be superior to the current standards, and 2) it will probably take about 8 years to assess them.

On the other hand, textbook publishers will love selling new CC textbooks and education think-tanks already love the $s Bill Gates has given them to support CC.

The 'conservative' position is to bet that like most of the reforms in the past two decades no statistically significant improvement will be seen.

TIMSS results for 2012 (I believe - the results came out in 2012)

Average math scores, 8th grade (57 countries and education systems)
Korea, Republic of 613
Singapore 611
Chinese Taipei 609
Hong Kong 586
Japan 570
Massachusetts 561
Russia 539
Connecticut 518
Florida 513
US average 509
TIMSS scale ave. 500

Average science scores, 8th grade (56 countries and education systems)
Singapore 590
Massachusetts 567
Chinese Taipei 564
Korea, Republic of 560
Japan 558
Finland 552
Slovenia 543
Connecticut 532
Florida 530
US average 525
TIMSS scale ave. 500

So we know that the MCAS standards and exit tests can put us in the top tier in science and math given the example of Massachusetts. So it makes complete sense that Massachusetts is tossing MCAS and going to Common Core.

It might have been better if the rest of the country adopted MCAS.

 

[WildVolley]

So perhaps we have better results with a homogeneous population.

That's not exactly the point I was making.

What I was saying was that in the US, even when we look at a school or classroom with different ethnic groups, statistically some ethnic groups do better than others when taught the same things. Everyone knows this but no one wants to touch it because it is too politically incorrect, and more than that, no one really knows what to do about it.

For example, I'd guess that even in Singapore, that the ethnic Chinese do better in math than the ethnic Malays. Most likely the difference in achievement probably doesn't have anything to do with what is going on in the classroom.

 

[Bartelby]

Nobody has any 'politically correct' desire to ignore differences in educational attainment among different ethnic groups ...

if ethnicity is defined in socio-cultural terms rather than biological or essentialist terms.

 

[movdqa]

There may well be cultural factors involved and it may indeed result in different performance levels by race, sub-race, ethnicity or religious beliefs. But the international tests try to control for that be ensuring that a broad cross-section of the population be test so that the strong and weak students are represented in test results.

There are some really horrible areas in MA where the results aren't that good and even places where receivership is talked about but the state does quite well in international competition.

In Singapore, the government can do media (propaganda if you will) campaigns on things like health and education. We used to do this in the US up until around the late 1990s. Public Service Announcements to stay in school, don't do drugs, etc.

What do you do about cultural issues? I'd say raise and educate a generation of kids that can eventually employ best practices on their kids. Put in one major effort and then it becomes self-sustaining and there's enough momentum so that newcomers to the country can get advice from the existing population.

I don't think that our freedoms and rights would make this easy or affordable though.

Our responsibility as parents is to make sure that our kids become educated and productive members of society. After you take care of your own kids, then you can think of others - you don't want to raise kids that add to the burden of society. Sometimes you may feel that you can't make any kind of a difference because nobody will listen to you - but you very well may be able to make a difference for one student. Or two. Or three. There's always the ability to make things better for a few; even if you can't makes as much as a scratch in the overall system.

 

[Topspin Shot]

You fail to understand that we all know you're full of it; and yours is only a reflex caused by seeing the word "tea" followed immediately by the word "party".

Now this is a real ad hominem. You have nothing left to contribute. I'm done debating with you.

 

[WildVolley]

Nobody has any 'politically correct' desire to ignore differences in educational attainment among different ethnic groups ...

if ethnicity is defined in socio-cultural terms rather than biological or essentialist terms.

Your response proves my contention.

Anyone who touches the topic is branded a racist unless he holds to a politically pre-conceived position. Even ignoring a potential genetic basis for differences doesn't provide protection from politically motivated attacks. Suggesting that some cultures produce superior educational outcomes is enough to get academics fired or shunned in most of the world.

 

[Bartelby]

A broad cross-section of a city state is different to that of a vast country of 300 million.

As is a broad cross-section of a largely homogenous society compared to that of a very diverse one.

Chinese people are the product of Chinese civilisation, which at one point was the most advanced in the world, so you'd expect them to do well in education providing other conditions are present.

 

[Bartelby]

Yes, well, why do academics advocate special measures for socially and culturally deprived groups if they are that fearful?

And why are such special measures routinely blocked by the right on specious grounds?

Your response proves my contention.

Anyone who touches the topic is branded a racist unless he holds to a politically pre-conceived position. Even ignoring a potential genetic basis for differences doesn't provide protection from politically motivated attacks. Suggesting that some cultures produce superior educational outcomes is enough to get academics fired or shunned in most of the world.

 

[WildVolley]

Yes, well, why do academics advocate special measures for socially and culturally deprived groups if they are that fearful?

And why are such special measures routinely blocked by the right on specious grounds?

Since you seem ignorant about this topic, I'd like to point out that academics and politicians supporting the "politically correct" position on education have been in power at least since the early 1970s.

They would like us to pretend, as you do, that their interventions haven't been tried even though they have a long record of failure and in many cases the achievement gap has grown.

 

[Bartelby]

Well, the left did invent the term 'politically correct', even if they used it in an ironical and self-referential way lost on the militant culture warriors of the right ...

for whom the left is always responsible, especially for the hot weather.

The left, including on educational matters, has been eclipsed by the right from the late seventies onwards.

Since you seem ignorant about this topic, I'd like to point out that academics and politicians supporting the "politically correct" position on education have been in power at least since the early 1970s.

They would like us to pretend, as you do, that their interventions haven't been tried even though they have a long record of failure and in many cases the achievement gap has grown.

 

[WildVolley]

The left, including on educational matters, has been eclipsed by the right from the late seventies onwards.

Are you talking about the United States?

If so, the above statement as applied to the educational establishment in the United States is so inaccurate that it should permanently disqualify you from opining on educational issues in the United States.

 

[Bartelby]

The right wing are always fighting culture wars, and always portray themselves as the underdogs in whatever country you look at.

Are you talking about the United States?

If so, the above statement as applied to the educational establishment in the United States is so inaccurate that it should permanently disqualify you from opining on educational issues in the United States.

 

[spaceman_spiff]

I can't be bothered to read through all the posts in this thread, especially the political arguments. But, I'd just like share my experience of public schools.

My brothers and I went to a magnet school in highschool, so we were lucky enough to at least spend 4 years with some of the smartest kids and best available teachers in the area. When my eldest brother was a senior, only about a dozen kids were enrolled in Calc I, which was the highest level of math offered at the time. By the time my other brother was a senior (3 years later), there were about 30. By the time I was a senior (another 5 years later), we had 2 classes of 30(ish) and a half dozen kids who went to a local college to study Calc II.

The magnet program in my home town has since expanded so that there are 2 highschools, and my mom teaches in 1 of them. Nowadays, Calc II is a standard class taught on site with a couple dozen students enrolled each year.

That's what public schools in one of the poorer states in the US have accomplished in 30 years when working with kids who take education seriously.

 

[Bartelby]

Politics is essentially as struggle over the allocation of the best personal and material resources, so the magnet program is an example of a policy setting favouring poorer student populations.