Title: The Common Core: A Disaster for Libraries, A Disaster for Language Arts, a Disaster for American Education.
Source: Krashen, S. (2014). The common core. Knowledge Quest, 42(3), 36.
Url: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/01/the-common-core-disaster-for-libraries.html
Key points: This article brings up the idea that the education system would be better off fighting against poverty than using the common core. A lot of our students face poverty issues, such as lack of food, appropriate health care and access to educational resources. It is shown that countries with low amount of students in poverty do better in school. Common core requires a lot of testing and direct instruction to be effective. This hurts the teacher's ability to properly educate students and schools could be using money for testing to help students meet their basic needs.
Intended audience: Teachers, students, parents, people of the community.
Relevance: Our school district has adapted the common core recently, so it is interesting to hear a different side to it. I am not a big fan of standardize testing, as I feel it can limit our students in the classroom. It gives all our students a generic education, instead of allowing them to reach their potential.
Common core is part of the radical left "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." States were coerced into Common Core by the threat of funds withholding...which is an example of why education should be controlled and funded locally. Regarding schools being a tool to fight poverty, I'm not so sure. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, "the War on Poverty has cost $22 trillion -- three times more than what the government has spent on all wars in American history." And all this spent treasure has not led to a drop in the poverty rate. In my opinion, though there is a positive correlation between education and income, the main cause of poverty is the breakup of traditional family and the rise of welfare dependence.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it called a "War on Poverty"? And just because you throw money at a problem doesn't make it go away. The U.S. has a poor track record with using research- or evidence-based methods to solve problems, as well as continuing to fund programs research actually show don't work, like D.A.R.E. and the welfare system.
Deletehttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-poverty-after-50-years
Standardized testing kills me! Research shows it doesn't improve retention or knowledge. Not to mention the time the teachers spend teaching to the test instead of fostering critical thinking or creativity! And of course, we all know about good ol' Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so they make a good argument for their case. I couldn't agree more with the title. It's a complete disaster across the board.
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