[ POLL ] Common Core.

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How do you know that those areas are now behind from where they were before?

As a teacher, I strongly feel that these standards help teachers remain accountable.

I shudder to think of what some teachers I know would be doing if they did not have these measures in place. Of course, I’m in a very conservative area, but still…

I never advocated doing away with the Common Core. I just advocate more flexibility.

Perhaps the analogy with Communism wasn't so hot, after all.

I dont think that it is a question of "falling behind" so much as "going off the rails". Actually "falling behind" is also an issue.

For example in my humble opinion every American kid should graduate public school knowing who Robert E. Lee was (whether you want statues of him or not is up to you but you should know who he was), and who MLK Jr. was. And certain other historic figures. If (I dont even know if this is true or not) some local blue state school districts might conceivably get so woke that they dont even mention Robert E. Lee in history class then thats a problem in my opinion. Or if some red state districts get so reactionary that they dont mention slavery at all, or dont mention evolution, then thats a problem, in my humble opinion. Culture wars and region distort things. A certain common core of things should be taught to every american school kid.

A lot of people forget facts from history after learning it. Most schools still cover American history in-depth.

More schools are teaching evolution. I believe it’s a requirement now in most, if not all, states.

I love history.

I love that schools teach evolution.

"Creationism" and that ilk, in my opinion, should be left to a religious institution. It shouldn't be taught on a par with evolution.

I dont know what your point is.

All american schools have always taught history. And all american schools have always mentioned evolution. Though Textbooks printed in Texas tend to gloss over evolution. I am talking about in the coming years history being given spin regionally, or biology given spin regionally, etc due to politics. Some regional variation maybe okay. But I think that there should be certain common things that every kid in the country she be taught about before graduating highschool so all Americans can have some common cultural currency to communicate with.

On the other hand...folks DO have trouble retaining facts that they learned in school.

So...here is a modest proposal for revamping US education...


https://youtu.be/kO8x8eoU3L4

In my experience a common curriculum has done little but increase the number of students on IEP in mainstream classes.

Providing IEP for numerous students at numerous levels with numerous accommodations burns out teachers, and leads to fragmented learning experiences for the entire class.

No one in their right mind can imagine that 28 children can all receive individualised instruction from one person.

In my school, there's up to 5 students with IEPs per classroom. Most of their needs are met by special education teachers. They spend some of the day in their homeroom classrooms and some in learning and/or emotional support rooms.

More students should be receiving services in my opinion.

My point, if you read my post carefully, is that they are being taught these things.

My daughter was in a split-grade class for Grades 7 and 8.

The teacher had to teach two completely different curricula because of the two grades.
For example the 7s learned about New France and the 8s learned about Confederation.
The 7s learned one type of science (with experiments) and the 8s learned another.
At the same time.
In 40 minute time blocks.

Then on top of that there were unlimited numbers of IEP.
I can't remember the number she told me but it was way more than five.
I want to say it was something like 10 kids out of 30.

Some needed Gifted programming, or slower-learner programming.
Some were legally required to be on the 5th, 6th, or even 9th and 10th grade curricula.
Then there were the visual learners and auditory learners with head sets.

Some parents demanded more homework for the class and others demanded less.

It was total insanity.

You're very lucky if there is a max of five in America.
I didn't know that but it sounds like a step in the right direction.

* I'm not referring to kids in Special Ed.
This was a mainstream, integrated class with one teacher.
All students are entitled to IEP if they have specific learning needs (even if they're not Spec Ed).

Spec Ed was only for a very elite group, but they were integrated to most mainstream classes anyway.

Well, my situation does not reflect all of America. There's a huge amount of variation per state and even per region in states. I think that the educational system should be more centralized and that there shouldn't be so much disparity.

The issues with my particular school mostly stem from underfunding. It's a low-performing school with a high drop-out rate and with very few students going to college afterwards.

It's sad that schools are so underfunded.
Governments spend trillions of dollars on war, but teachers need to hold a bake sale to buy pencils or books.

Inner-city schools here are just like what my daughter experienced.

I'm in favour of a common curriculum and common standards as much as it's possible. It just seems to be impossible these days with the poor funding and the demands for teachers to do ten jobs at once.



I'm just curious how they manage the five-student max where you are.
What if six or seven kids have IEP, and there's only funding for one teacher?
That's why we have so many split-grade classes.

Example:
Imagine there are 39 kids starting 4th grade, and 20 kids starting 5th grade (59 total).
The gov't will only pay for two teachers for the 59 kids.
Also, classes can't have fewer than 25 kids, or more than 32.
They end up making:

Class A) Grade 4/5 combined: 20 4th graders + 10 5th graders.
Class B) Another Grade 4/5 combined: 19 4th graders + 10 5th graders.

In a perfect world they should do

A) 20 4th grade
B) 19 4th grade
C) 20 5th grade ....

... but that makes a bit too much sense, and isn't allowed.


Re: Spec Ed. My daughter had a Gifted IEP and went to a withdrawal class once a week for 30 minutes.
They mostly baked cookies or did things seemingly unrelated to curriculum.
She got a lot of open-ended research projects to do at home.
Then she still had to do her missed work from class.

^^^I completely agree Isabella. Education has been majorly underfunded in America for a long time. There's a teacher shortage & the pandemic has made things a lot worse. Lots of teachers had problems with the sudden transition to teaching online. They did NOT have the training, guidelines, & needed supports. My mom & her teaching friends who are retired say they woulda quit if they had to make that sudden adjustment while they were teaching. Some schools are currently teaching online because they do not have enough teachers to operate physical classrooms, especially with the Covid related policies & rules. Some students are majorly struggling as well & there was even a case of a 15 year-old girl with ADHD who got arrested for missing her homework.
It's very LONG article & I'm just trying to point out problems with the education & IEPs not being met so I'll just copy those snippets.

A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-te ... -detention

If I woulda been a student when this pandemic started, I woulda been allowed to drop out or mom woulda tried home-schooling me & then quickly give up trying. I'm not great with technology & I also get distracted easily, especially at home. I could try in class or pretend to try enough for my teachers to curve my report card grades to Ds & I had lots of assignments that were incomplete. I quickly become very frustrated & want to give up when I feel I'm being pushed/forced to learn or do something I just can not grasp the way it's being taught to me. Pushing me too hard caused me to have BAD meltdowns at home. I needed my time at home to wind down from being at school instead of struggling to do school work from the time I got home till the time I went to bed except for eating & showering & such.

My IEPs were not really met till I started going to a school for Dyslexia in the middle of 6th grade. I had went to one public school from kindergarten through 3rd, went to the public school my mom taught at for 4th, & I went to a Catholic school for 5th & half of 6th. I had MAJOR problems in all 3 of those schools with learning, having too much homework, being bullied, & constantly in trouble cuz of my various Aspie & other issues & bullies lying on me & me having the reputation of a bad troublemaker.

My parents had to pay to send me to that dyslexia school & it was not close so they worked out a carpool system but I suddenly went from being a horrible student who was always in trouble, to suddenly being one of the best behaved & got nearly the best grades in my classes which were very small. I felt like I was actually learning most everything. I also was not bullied that much compared to my previous schools. Unfortunately that school only went up to 8th grade so I went to a Catholic high-school that my parents paid for. I took the easiest classes I could when I had any choices & I had more accommodations than I did at the 3 schools I went to before the dyslexic one. I did well in a few high-school classes, did bad in some, & did OK in some.

I strongly believe that learning should be more individualized & cater more to a student's strengths, skills, & talents instead of forcing them to all meet the same requirements they may not be capable of meeting. After all common sense would tell us to not expect a completely blind student to learn the same way as students with normal 20/20 vision; & we would not toss a student who only knows Spanish into a classroom that is only taught in English & actually expect that student to immediately start learning everything before they are taught English. Schools need to be more accommodating for various types of learning issues & special needs instead of pushing those students so hard that they want to give up & drop out. There are lots of various types of jobs & careers out there after all so students should be allowed to have wide variations. Colleges should only require students to take courses that are related to the majors they pick instead of requiring students to take a variety of classes & have certain grades in order to be a freshman there. There should be more trade schools where students can specially learn one type of various trades without the extra focus on unrelated things. My dad dropped out of college after failing English 2wice & being told by his teacher that she would never pass him. He was working in construction at the time so he focused on that & he earned more money & was a lot happier with his job than my mom who was a public school teacher. Mom often stayed late at school & brought lots of work home with her as well & she was very underpaid for it. How the hell can the system logically expect the teachers to meet standard requirements for every student when the teachers are stressed out & overwhelmed from being overworked & struggling financially

Education.

Elaboration:

My best guess is that business & political interests in these states rely on an uneducated population in order for them to retain power, thrive, and make ridiculous sums of money. Their motto has got to be something along the lines of a phrase trump famously used: "I LOVE the poorly educated!" If businesses & politicians allow people in those areas to learn and know things like those in the rest of the country, they'll then have all sorts of opportunities for different employment, even higher education, relocation, and will simply think better/clearer, more deeply and critically, and thus will no longer be dependent on the local employers for daily work & daily bread. It's a system of control to maintain the status quo, and likely sold to the uneducated population by convincing them that "Them schooly demoncrats is tryin' to push their cray cray coastal city ideas in ur headz!! Don't lets 'em; NevAAArr!! COMMUNISTS!! !!"

It's about that simple, IMO.

It's on purpose/by design. The USA doesn't lack funds. They drop $ SEVEN HUNDRED+ BILLSKY per YEAR on the military because the USA's priorities are to go to war and maintain geopolitical dominance. Little money is spent on educating people because they don't want people to be any higher educated than they are. As long as people have low education levels, it's very easy to convince them of things (like trump did for the last ~7 years) & to keep them toiling away in crappy jobs for low pay in order to keep the ruling Billionaire & political class in power and living the high life.

Lack of education funding isn't a mistake or an accident, it's intentional, in order to keep the poor masses in their place while selling them a day dream story of the American dream that they can achieve if they just pull up their bootstraps and work ever harder. It's all a scam.

IF I were trapped in a state that operated like this, and I had the grey matter to realize it, I'd do everything it took to gtfo to a coastal state where people have opportunities. If it wasn't that easy to do/was nearly impossible to come up with the money and I didn't want to try to do it on a welfare budget of just F it I'll live in a shack as long as I can get out of here kind of thing, I'd be making up the education gaps myself as much as possible.. learning to read better if that was the first constraint, then reading and learning, taking online classes etc etc filling my head with higher knowledge for free since it's all available on the internet, and then applying it as fast and best I could to better myself until I could escape that part of the country. I'd be determined not to allow myself or my family to be trapped in such a system of intentional ignorance and near slavery.