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The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

nytimes.com

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Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#31

Post by Kephael »

justin_vanw wrote: post #29
elgabogringo wrote: post #24

Would we buy "Government Software"? What about "Government computers"? Any of you tried to go to the California DMV's in the Bay Area lately? How is Government single-payer health care (the VA) working out for veterans? Given this sentiment why do we feel like single-payer Government schools are the answer to educating our children? I just don't see how we can get incentives inside of a government system to align wit…

Why does the DMV even exist? If we didn't have driving tests, would it really matter at all? Do we need all this paperwork to own a car? What if we didn't have any of it at all? Does anyone think that some 16 year old who barely passes the driving test is any better of a driver than that same 16 year old who didn't have to take the test? The DMV just shouldn't exist. We could abolish it tomorrow, fire all the employe…

You'd have children trying to drive on the road before they are ready and crashing into things with great frequency.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#32

Post by justin_vanw »

Kephael wrote: post #31
justin_vanw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the DMV even exist? If we didn't have driving tests, would it really matter at all? Do we need all this paperwork to own a car? What if we didn't have any of it at all? Does anyone think that some 16 year old who barely passes the driving test is any better of a driver than that same 16 year old who didn't have to take the test? The DMV just shouldn't exist. We could abolish it tomorrow, fire all the employe…

You'd have children trying to drive on the road before they are ready and crashing into things with great frequency.

So again, how is that different from now?

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#34

Post by nucleardog »

brianwawok wrote: post #6
jcbeard wrote: post #2

You know, as a parent I'd heard many things about "Common Core" from the media, other parents, and even family members. When my son got to kindergarten I was a bit worried about overbearing tests and the lack of a tried and true teaching method. Well, what we got were concepts. In kindergarten, my son learned things that I recognized as basic number theory...almost as if it came straight out of Andrew's book of the s…

So my lovely state bailed out of common core a 2 years ago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/25/i... I have fairly mixed feelings. In theory, why would a state need to create their own education curriculum? Should a student in New York learn different stuff than a student in Ohio? And I do feel that letting states pick in matters like this means you will have fun things like certain states bann…

> As a comp sci person, you can't improve what you don't measure. Tests are how you measure. So I get it. But if I decided to measure the page load time of my server to ultimately improve server performance, no one is really hurt by that.

The problem is when you write something to measure that and then ask someone else to solve the problem. Systems like this almost always lead to optimizing for the measurement, not the end goal.

I mean, sure, at first I'm going to optimize code and work to increase efficiency to get the latency down because I actually care about my work. If that doesn't get me to the goal you've set and you keep hounding me and eventually tell me that if I want to have a job next year I'm going to get the page load time down...

I'm probably going to start stripping less-used features, maybe having the server occasionally serve a nearly blank "Click here to Refresh" page to game the average, see if I can't specifically serve less content to your measurement application... All of this results in a worse experience, but a better metric.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#35

Post by tzs »

brianwawok wrote: post #6
jcbeard wrote: post #2

You know, as a parent I'd heard many things about "Common Core" from the media, other parents, and even family members. When my son got to kindergarten I was a bit worried about overbearing tests and the lack of a tried and true teaching method. Well, what we got were concepts. In kindergarten, my son learned things that I recognized as basic number theory...almost as if it came straight out of Andrew's book of the s…

So my lovely state bailed out of common core a 2 years ago. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/25/i... I have fairly mixed feelings. In theory, why would a state need to create their own education curriculum? Should a student in New York learn different stuff than a student in Ohio? And I do feel that letting states pick in matters like this means you will have fun things like certain states bann…

> I have fairly mixed feelings. In theory, why would a state need to create their own education curriculum?

The issue of who should create a curriculum is orthogonal to Common Core, because Common Core does not provide a curriculum. It is essentially just a list of goals and a schedule for when students should meet those goals.

For instance the standards for the "Measurement and Data" part of mathematics say that Kindergarten students should be able to describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight, directly compare two objects with a common measurable attribute and state which has more of or less of that attribute, and group objects by a measurable attribute.

First graders should be able to order three objects by length and compare two objects the length of two objects indirectly by using a third object, use a simple ruler to measure objects that are an integral multiple of the ruler size, tell and write time in hours and half hours using analog and digital clocks, and do some simple organization and interpretation of data with up to three categories.

How a state gets to those goals is up to it. It can develop its own curriculum if it wishes, or adopt one developed by a national publisher, so something in between. The arguments for and against these possibilities remain largely unchanged with Common Core from what they were before Common Core.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#36

Post by pikzen »

justin_vanw wrote: post #32
Kephael wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have children trying to drive on the road before they are ready and crashing into things with great frequency.

So again, how is that different from now?

Greater frequency.

And let's not forget that driving tests are not standardised in the US amongst states. So depending on where you live, your test could either have been something that really checks if you know how your car works, how to safely do maneuvers, how to react to emergencies and how to drive with other cars on the road, or it might have just checked that you can drive around a block. Fix your driving licence tests at a national level, then maybe you'll see how the DMV is useful.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#38

Post by rayiner »

davidgerard wrote: post #3
jcbeard wrote: post #2

You know, as a parent I'd heard many things about "Common Core" from the media, other parents, and even family members. When my son got to kindergarten I was a bit worried about overbearing tests and the lack of a tried and true teaching method. Well, what we got were concepts. In kindergarten, my son learned things that I recognized as basic number theory...almost as if it came straight out of Andrew's book of the s…

The fundamental problem is the US habit of funding schools out of property taxes. Then being actually surprised when schools in rich areas are good and schools in poor areas are terrible. Gosh! How could this have happened? This is not a problem that more tests are going to solve.

Only half of school spending comes from local property taxes. The other half comes from state and federal grants to poorer school districts. In almost every state, students in poorer districts get more money per student once you account for federal and state money: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-2...

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#39

Post by rabboRubble »

elgabogringo wrote: post #24

Would we buy "Government Software"? What about "Government computers"? Any of you tried to go to the California DMV's in the Bay Area lately? How is Government single-payer health care (the VA) working out for veterans? Given this sentiment why do we feel like single-payer Government schools are the answer to educating our children? I just don't see how we can get incentives inside of a government system to align wit…

The problem isn't government, the problem is US government.

I've seen plenty of examples in other countries of government working well. Roads free of potholes. Trains that penetrate every part of the country, are well maintained, and run on time. Public school education that provides literacy rates in the 90%+ range. Single payer national health care systems that are cost effective and beloved by the people under those systems' care.

Our US government failures are an extension of our public's lack of commitment to the funding and policy needed for good government service.

The problem is us.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#40

Post by WalterBright »

2k03kv4r5p wrote: post #21
WalterBright wrote: post #18

> Children starting in the third grade may spend more than 10 hours a year taking state tests — and weeks preparing for them. I don't really understand the issue there. There's about 900 hours/year of instruction, and 10 hours of that being tests doesn't seem like a large burden. Secondly, "preparing for the tests" sounds like "learning", what is supposed to be happening. The article also complains about the inept im…

>I don't see why the tests can't be administered on paper and have the teachers grade them. Standardized tests are used to evaluate teachers and schools. Given the chance, teachers and school administrators will cheat on them. By the way, teacher's union desires that their performance not be evaluated is a source of motivated reasoning on this topic, so be skeptical.

> Given the chance, teachers and school administrators will cheat on them.

I know. This can be mitigated by swapping the anonymized test sheets with other schools to be graded.

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