If you do not have a school aged child then perhaps you have not heard of it. Basically Common Core is a new government education initiative to be rolled out in 45 states starting this year. More then half are all ready teaching the standards with Alabama leading the way.
What it was created to do was bring diverse curricula to all school aged children. When the stimulus was hatched in 2008-09, the school districts were offered stimulus money to help them through the recession. If they took the money they had to commit to teaching CC. Now if a district does not teach CC, they will not be eligible for federal educational funding.
What is the worse part about CC ? Is that it is even being forced on home schooled kids..If home schooled students are not taught CC and cannot pass CC testing, they will not graduate.
As our oldest progresses through the 3rd grade, Senior and I are starting to see signs of CC. He never brings home a book, only work sheets. He is currently working on 100 math problems to solve in 5 min. The class can not progress to the next level until every one has passed the current level they are on. So for instance: Student A who flies through the questions and passes, he can not advance until every one else as passed as well, thus holding Student A back.
So now, because not every one has passed in our sons class, they are actually falling behind. Currently they should be doing multiplication problems, but the entire class is still stuck on subtraction.
Michelle Malkin had a typical 3rd grade CC math problem posted on twitchy today, and please note that there are no shaded areas :
The good news about CC is that support is sinking. The NY teachers union, a group composed of more then 600,000 educators has withdrawn support for it and have shown no confidence in this initiative.
Texas, Minnesota, Alaska, Virginia, Nebraska are charging forward and telling the federal government to stay out of the their classrooms, Four opted completly out, and MN opted out of the english portion. South Carolina's governor; Nicki Haley is supporting state legislative action to block it as well. Florida has adopted the legislative but is opting out of the testing phases.
resources:
http://twitchy.com/2014/01/27/good-luck-solving-this-3rd-grade-common-core-math-problem/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-04-28/common-core-education/54583192/1
http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/11/unlike_alabama_these_five_stat.html
