George Rebane
More test scores keep rolling in telling those paying attention what our educational systems have done to the newest generation of America's students – and it isn’t pretty. The only ones still genuflecting to our union dominated public schools are the nation’s progressives (including our local lefties) who dare not let light shine on the truth for fear (completely substantiated) that it blows up their social narrative.
In the meantime PJ Media reports ‘Common Core: ACT Scores for Class of 2018 Worst in Decades’. Bottom line – our students’ scores in all subjects declined, but we took the worst hits in math. There the “the average score on the ACT math test dropped to its lowest level in 20 years — 20.5 on a scale of 1 to 36. American students scored 21.1 in 2012 and 20.7 last year.” We weren’t that hot to begin with, and now we’re just sinking lower than ever on the world stage of competing countries where STEM acumen counts most. (more here)
The latest big problem in our education, of course, is Common Core. The propaganda on CC was that it would just establish some standards, but not dictate curriculum – wrong!
Congressman Andy Thompson of Ohio has been, from the start, attempting to minimize the damage done by CC. He says, "I think testimony we took during our attempts to eradicate Common Core showed the dumbing down of curriculum, the social justice indoctrination, the emphasis on social-emotional learning, reduced quantity and quality of reading, emphasizing screen time rather than classroom instruction." Thompson went on to explain that the "destruction of proper math" has also been a contributing factor. … (CC proponents) place a higher priority on indoctrination than education."
None of the Common Core contamination of curricula makes any sense on the national scale, save for how it neatly dovetails into the objectives laid out in Agenda21. (H/T to reader)
Obamacare was voted on by the House and Senate, packed by voters in the USA to be controlled by Democrats from top to bottom. Veto proofed, as the nation had come to the conclusion that GW Bush and his minions in the GOP were responsible for everything bad, including the virtual collapse of the economy when the Democratic Party sacred cow Government Sponsored Entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell apart.
How the blame for the GSE's got transferred to the GOP is interesting, but water under the bridge.
By the time the nation had come to its senses, the wretchedly misnamed Affordable Care Act had been voted into place, and we could finally look at the bill that had been gifted us by Pelosi, Reid and Obama.
That is NOT how Common Core got put into place... there was no vote of the House or the Senate. The heavy lifting was all done by education bureaucrats working in the shadows, funded primarily by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation money, and just enough misdirection to convince people that 1) it was all good, and 2) that the states controlled the Common Core State Standards, which they did not.
Education bureaucrats had known (absolutely, positively KNOWN) for decades that discovery methods were best, and it took people like Jack Price, President of the NCTM in the early 90's who said, on the record, that the bad old days of kids learning standard algorithms for reasoning with fractions, multiplying, and (gasp) long division was good for the most part for high socioeconomic status white boys, but kids of color, and girls, learned best by the methods defined in the 1989 NCTM "Standards" that were standards for how to teach math, not what math kids should be learning in each grade.
The Common Core enshrined the NCTM "Standards", and the machinations were funded by well over $250 million of Gates' money moved from one 501c3 to another in a web of backs being scratched.
It's all collapsing in slow motion now, as the totality of the takeover delayed the bad news that came quick to states like California in the '90's, as we had the tests like the SAT9 and then the STAR exam based on the SAT9 that showed a dropoff in scores.
Posted by: Gregory | 24 October 2018 at 07:47 PM
Good read, on topic
http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/26/public-schools-indoctrinate-kids-without-almost-anyone-noticing/
Posted by: Bill Tozer | 27 October 2018 at 09:41 AM
BillT 941am - We notice, and the left wingers don’t consider it indoctrination.
Posted by: George Rebane | 27 October 2018 at 01:22 PM