Waiting For Superman--The Other Side Voicing Concern Against CCSSI

Emergency Alert(as one mother has said-Our Kids Are Not For Sale Not Even In This Drastic Economy. ) Many states signed on in hopes of getting education dollars.  It is time to see the truth--this common standards or national standards--will take away parental input at the local shool boards!!!

There is a need for better schools--without a question--but getting our governors to go along with the common core standards is not the way to go as Waiting For Superman closes with that suggestion.

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)  with Achieve, ACT and the College Board partnered (with a jump start from Bill Gates) for the Common Core Standards States Initiative or CCSSI.

It is supposed to get our kids college and career ready which is a wonderful goal but there are strings attached which should not be there--one very glaring is the fact that many parents will lost their voice through their local school boards as to what will be taught their children--as the common core standards will be set nationally.

Here are some info and links from the other side with valid concerns (most specially the right of parents).

Most prominent are the perspective from Professor Jim Milgram and Professor Sandra Stotsky who were in the national validation committee of the common core standards.  Most states agreed to these standards as part of their application for "race to the top" grants--even before the standards were published in June.

"How can the State Boards of Education make decisions when they haven't even read the standards? Many state's Board Member had never been initiated into what was in these documents.  What were the policy issues coming out of these documents and whether these analyses were truly were in a sense legitimate academic analysis-- a really serious issue of uninformed Boards of Education in this country which they would never do on most other issues.  These are very serious issues about what self- government means at the state and local government level."--Sandra Stotsky,  professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and holds the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality.

"There are two separate automacity requirements for all of the algorithms--one is their own construction and then the other is the standard algorithm.  Standard Algorithm always come a year or two later and so these students are going to learn their own way of doing things many of which are incorrect and then they're going to learn the standard algorithm and they're going to get totally confused.  The net effect in terms of learning is that they know neither approach verywell.  The second set of things-- the requirement to automaticity on their own self- invented algorithms was one of the political issues that came in at the last moment and it's  absolutely crazy.  And then there was an entire list of similar ones, that equally made no sense whatsoever in terms of the long term development of children's mathematical capacity." --  Dr. R. James Milgram, professor of mathematics at Stanford University.

Since they were on the inside and have such impeccable outstanding background--their knowledge is truly worth listening to and these are their interviews for you to hear them yourself.

Part I-- with Betty Peters

Part II--with Betty Peters, Penny Wolcott, Donna Garner and Beth Schultz

Part III --with Dawn Wildman of the California Tea Party and Wayne Wood, retired teacher

More Interviews to give you more perspectives:

Part IV--with Betty Peters, Beth Schultz, Audrey Buffington, and Anne Marie Banfield 

Part V--with Donna Garner, Sue Neuwein, Margaret Dobbs, Wanda McDonald and Pastor Mary Shellnut

More links worth reading (we will keep posting more daily):

Common Sense on Common Core

Anne Marie Banfield

Beth Schultz

Jamie Gass

Waiting For Superman--Exposed

Everywhere they are looking for a way to fix education.  The new movie Waiting For Superman hopes to give America the answer.  It addresses the problem of teachers who performs so badly and who can not be removed from their positions.  Some would have us to opt for a new kind of schools --Charter schools.  

The annual cost for inmate is more than double what is spent on a student in public schcol.  Congress passed the  No Child Left Behind act, and eight years later 70 percent of eighth graders could not read at grade level.  So Hollywood in its wonderful ability to play on our mind is going to convince us that the CCSSI-Common Core States Standards Initiative that the Gates Foundation started--(which will nationalize education) is the way to do it.  It will save our children.

I hope and pray parents will listen to interviews with Professors Jim Milgram and Sandra Stotsky (both with impeccable backgrounds as experts in education) both on National Validation Committee on the common core standards and who tells us what happens when the best intentions is married with politics and other motives.  Professor Jim Milgram, Math Professor from Stanford cites in this interview:

• He sees problems with fluency or automaticity(you want to learn a technique for adding, subtracting to multiply and dividing so well lthat you don't have time to think about it.)  There are two different fluency standards at each grade level in these new core standards.
• One is what they call self-constructed algorithms which could be anything including wrong and other is for the standard algorithms.  My first objection was that I can't imagine the degree of confusion that students are going to have having to learn to complete fluency (they're often non-sensical algorithms) and then a year or so later having to learn the fluency of the standard algorithms.  Inconsistent, there's a bunch of that in there-both in algorithms for ordinary arithmetic and equally as bad for fractions.  If you can't have fractions you can't develop Algebra. Algebra really depends on what kids learn in fractions.  When they move from ordinary arithmetic to arithemtic of fractions--everythings they see there is duplicated as basically the same in the Algebra.  So if they get the fractions right the Algebra should be very simple if they don't get fractions right the Algebra may be in fact be impossible.
• There has been research done and we know it in math committee itself we understand better what most of these things mean that we did 100 years ago when the original designs were developed.  It is possible to take that knowledge and improve instruction but that is something that is done in high achieving countries such as the east Asian countries in particular but is something that is intensely resisted by the education committee in this country.

In light of just that can we really expect this to save America's children?  Food for thought-the CCSSI 

-hear complete interview--click on this link--click on the POD icon in gray at beginning of description.

Also hear more interviews and share before America is brainwashed and the truth hidden when Hollywood covers the issues as they truly can with so much glimmer and glitz.  Hope adults can see through it more than our kids can.

America doesn't have to wait--the answer is here (click on link).  It worked so well that one of Europe's social scientist remarked "... and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth."