Year: 2013 Page 2 of 16

Day 825 of 1000
Betty Blonde #9 – 07/29/2008

Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Yesterday I wrote a post about a ridiculous event, reported by World Magazine, that happened at a government school in Indianpolis.  It was suggested this event was due to problems with the Common Core standards being imposed by the (to paraphrase Wayne LaPierre of the NRA) “jack-booted government school thugs” from the Federal Department of Education.  My favorite government school teacher (and cousin), Trisha, disabused me of that notion with the following commentary posted as a comment to the offending blog post.

That curriculum was a problem at the District Level not a Common Core problem. I see this over and over again. Each district implements the Common Core based on their own understanding of it and often choose terrible a terrible curriculum to implement it. I do agree there is a problem with a “one size fits all” standard. I think the lower students suffer the most in this instance because no matter what they are expected to have mastered all of the standards for that grade level by the end of the year. Sometimes students are not developmentally ready for the grade they are in or the curriculum being taught. Higher students have more options that I see. For instance I have a student from a lower grade coming to my class for math and to an upper grade for reading. If the district is asking you to put all students in a box w/o differentiating there is an issue w/ the district or the state. The curriculum is a HUGE issue though. Districts and even states don’t spend enough time doing research into finding a quality curriculum. At our school they have purchased so many different curriculum’s over the years our basement is full of them. They really didn’t do the research and wasted a lot of money. Also, if you decide upon a curriculum teachers really need to be given the time to study it so it can be taught effectively. As for Common Core, every state has always had its own standards, and they are always flawed. Read the Common Core standards before forming an opinion though… because how they are implemented is many times based on a teacher, administrator, or districts opinion of what the standards say, and sometimes that is wayyyyyy off of reality.

I called her on the phone, mostly to see if I was going to be shut out of the house at the next family get-together, but also to talk about what she wrote.  Thankfully, she is in full agreement with the idea that whether the problem about which I wrote is a result of Federal involvement or government school ignorance or malfeasence, the Feds have no useful role in public education.

Update:  Oops.  I almost forgot.  You can read Trisha’s awesome blog here.