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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

#51

Post by brianwawok »

tzs wrote: post #35
brianwawok wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Kin…

This is good info, thanks.

So then should all states require the same standards of their students? I do not see why not. But not sure how to agree on a non-stupid set of standards.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#52

Post by Deckard256 »

The system works as its designed to. It produces standardized young adults that are compliant to authority. Standardized tests don't really tell us a whole lot about how functional these kids are, outside of how compliant they are. The two (yes two) professionals that helped produce common core, now lecture against it.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#53

Post by jcbeard »

macspoofing wrote: post #11
brianwawok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. In some areas I have lived the spending per student was higher at the inner city school vs the rich school 2 miles away. Where the money came from didn't matter. What mattered is the parents of the poor school worked 2 jobs and had no time for the kids. The parents of the rich kids had stay at home moms and tutors. Depending on your belief system there would also be very different genetics betwe…

>What mattered is the parents of the poor school worked 2 jobs and had no time for the kids. The parents of the rich kids had stay at home moms and tutors. Or single-parent vs. two-parent households. Controlling for everything else, that fact seems to be the biggest culprit in the future success of a child. Working two jobs is a symptom of a single-parent household

Working two jobs is the symptom of not making enough money to survive on. My mom (a teacher) worked multiple jobs (and yes, single parent household). She had friends when I was growing up and we had neighbors who had multiple jobs with both parents. Service jobs often don't pay enough to live, however, these are increasingly the bulk of the employment opportunities. So back to my original post, we spend $1+ million on each cruise missile. That could send dozens to college. We can't get back manufacturing jobs. Even if they're in the U.S., they'll be automated. What we need is more innovation. We can't get back coal either, but we can figure out what the next big energy source will be. Who knows, maybe we can get coal back....perhaps there's a super efficient way to do carbon capture that we haven't developed. The point is we have a huge technical debt in our society. Education is just one bit of it.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#54

Post by dwmtm »

rayiner wrote: post #13
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…

> Likely spending $1.59m per cruise missile is part of it, and the other part what we seem to value in society....locking people up vs. fixing the core issues Cruise missles have nothing to do with it. We spend more on education per capita than any other developed country besides Switzerland. And our best performing school districts often spend a fraction of what our worst school districts spend per student. We don't…

Per capita spending is a little misleading here, is it not? Ceteris paribus, http://www.novinite.com/articles/143867/Bulgarian+Teachers+w... suggests Romania gets Bulgaria's educational results at nine tenths the cost, and Bulgaria achieves Luxembourg's results at a[n adjusted] seventh of the cost. I have no doubt that adjusting for teacher salaries leaves the rest of your analysis in tact, but I imagine the process would be educational in itself.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#55

Post by Broken_Hippo »

WalterBright wrote: post #48
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from a child's point of view, as my memories were from being a child, so a few hours a day was a really long time. The actual math works out, however. They did these over 3-4 days. 4 days is 2.5 hours a day: 3 days is 3 hours 22 minutes, approximately. A day of testing, the SAT for example, wasn't quite that rough at a much older age. 2 months ago I took official language exams here (immigrant). The main port…

Sure, but 10 hours over 900 hours in the school year, this is not a major part of it. I remember taking standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests in the 60's and 70's. They were mailed off to some central location to be graded by computer. It just wasn't a stress filled, onerous thing, even though they were used to assess school performance.

I was in school in until the mid-90's. They used them as placement tests when I took them. Do well, and it meant you were smart enough for the 'advanced' stuff. Do poorly, and you have to take summer school and/or redo the grade. Do poorly on the test, regardless of how well you do the rest of the year, and it affects your opportunities. I remember hours of boredom, only compounded by the fact that I tend to work quickly and was stuck sitting there quietly waiting. My sister, however, always did poorly taking tests and they never reflected what she knew. Some teachers gave some accommodations which improved her regular scores, but the state test did not. Even then the curriculum was changed to reflect tests, and the testing has only increased in importance since we've been in school, to the point that the amount of help you get from your teacher in some areas depends on how your test scores were last year.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#56

Post by ScottBurson »

rayiner wrote: post #49
ScottBurson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does not support your claim. In fact, quoting from the second paragraph: [I]n 23 states, state and local governments are together spending less per pupil in the poorest school districts than they are in the most affluent school districts. As the graphic farther down shows, only in about half the states do students in poorer districts get more money; only in 7 states do they get more by more than 5%, and o…

You gotta flip the button on the graphic to account for local, state, and federal spending. In all but four states, poorer school districts receive more money. As for your second point: that's a different argument than the one I was responding to, which was that lower educational spending in poor districts causes the achievement gap. Now, you can make a different argument, which is that poorer school districts should…

> You gotta flip the button on the graphic to account for local, state, and federal spending.

Gack, sorry, missed that.

> That implicitly concedes that the achievement gap is not due to a lack of funding, but due to external factors.

Yes, I think that's well established.

> So the question is, how to overcome those external factors? Why do we assume spending more money on teachers and facilities will do that?

I don't assume that spending more money will be sufficient; I agree it probably won't be. However, I think it is probably necessary.

What else will be required? Breaking the power of the teachers' unions, for one. Sounds like we agree on that.

How to do both of these things at the same time is a problem I have no solution for.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#57

Post by elgabogringo »

rabboRubble wrote: post #39
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 tho…

Care to give actual examples? Sounds like you are living in a different world than I am... And the "trains run on time" argument... Hmm... where have we heard that before?

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#58

Post by ScottBurson »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
ScottBurson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "preparing for the tests" sounds like "learning" That's the problem: it sounds like learning. I think it's the least useful kind of learning, though, and the most likely to be forgotten quickly. The best kind of learning is learning for the sheer joy of it. A totally test-driven education leaves no room for that; indeed, it beats all joy out of the students, teaching them that learning is a dry chore. And reducing…

I do not understand how anyone could tell if the kids are learning anything if they are not tested. > it beats all joy out Would you also say that scoring a football game beats all joy out of it? I would posit that an un-scored football game has little joy in it. It's just meaninglessly running around holding a ball. I remember tests from grammar school, and enjoyed it much as I enjoyed working puzzles. A couple of t…

> I do not understand how anyone could tell if the kids are learning anything if they are not tested.

So, we have no evidence that you know anything about programming language design and implementation, because you've never taken a test on it?

There are various ways of demonstrating mastery. Tests are one -- and I never suggested that there shouldn't be any; only that they shouldn't be the sole factor guiding the curriculum. Papers and other kinds of projects are also very important. They're somewhat out of favor, because they're more difficult to grade, and especially more difficult to grade uniformly on a large scale.

But I think the most common way that people demonstrate mastery is by simply getting interested in material at the next level of difficulty. Kids, if they read at all, will naturally read at a level that challenges them at least a little, because anything less is boring. Look at what level the kid gravitates to, and you have a pretty good idea where they're at. (Some will push themselves harder than others, of course.)

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#59

Post by WalterBright »

ScottBurson wrote: post #58
WalterBright wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand how anyone could tell if the kids are learning anything if they are not tested. > it beats all joy out Would you also say that scoring a football game beats all joy out of it? I would posit that an un-scored football game has little joy in it. It's just meaninglessly running around holding a ball. I remember tests from grammar school, and enjoyed it much as I enjoyed working puzzles. A couple of t…

> I do not understand how anyone could tell if the kids are learning anything if they are not tested. So, we have no evidence that you know anything about programming language design and implementation, because you've never taken a test on it? There are various ways of demonstrating mastery. Tests are one -- and I never suggested that there shouldn't be any; only that they shouldn't be the sole factor guiding the cur…

> So, we have no evidence that you know anything about programming language design and implementation, because you've never taken a test on it?

I wouldn't be offended if I applied for a compiler job and I was asked questions about compilers. In fact I was, when I applied for a job at Microsoft a long time ago.

I don't understand how someone can master a subject and yet be unable to answer questions about it.

Re: The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students

#60

Post by rabboRubble »

elgabogringo wrote: post #57
rabboRubble wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tho…

Care to give actual examples? Sounds like you are living in a different world than I am... And the "trains run on time" argument... Hmm... where have we heard that before?

I lived overseas for a great while, so some of this is first hand observation. I hold the equivalent of a US green card in a foreign country and worked extensively through Asia followed then by Europe.

Roads without potholes : Germany, Japan https://seattletransitblog.com/2009/04/17/japans-highways/ http://bridgemi.com/2014/04/why-are-germanys-roads-better-or... (after a more detailed read, this article doesn't support my point, but it's still interesting. And the roads in Germany were nice when I drove on them.)

Trains running on time : Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea (I heard horror stories about the UK system, but it worked well enough for me when I've gone there) http://kotaku.com/ever-wonder-why-japanese-trains-arent-late...

Countries by literacy rate : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_... (You have to go down to Syria to for the equivalent US literacy rate. We don't report our figures, but a quick Google search puts it about 86%)

Beloved national Health systems: Canada, France, even the UK's NHS

http://www.gallup.com/poll/8056/healthcare-system-ratings-us...

http://healthcare-economist.com/2008/04/14/health-care-aroun...

Hope this helps~

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