From the Washington Post:
Arne Duncan: ‘White suburban moms’ upset that Common Core shows their kids aren’t ‘brilliant’
BY VALERIE STRAUSS
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
"Single moms" = Good
"Suburban moms" = Ungood
"White suburban moms" = Doubleplusungood
Yes, he really said that. ...
Whichever side you fall on regarding the Core’s academic value, there is no question that their implementation in many areas has been miserable — so miserable that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a Core supporter, recently compared it to another particularly troubled rollout:
You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse.
... Duncan has repeatedly said the new Core-aligned standardized tests — being designed by two multistate consortia with some $350 million in federal money — would be light years ahead of the current tests. As it turns out, neither the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium nor the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers have had enough time or money to develop truly “game-changing” exams in terms of how they can really measure the broad range of student abilities ...
A bunch of other interesting WaPo articles by Valerie Strauss on education here.
Posts
77 comments:
Pfc. Cassius Clay
Laugh of the day!
So the week after he declares grudge-war on the insurance companies, his lieutenant calls out... white mothers of kids in public school.
Maybe this conspiracy to create an assassination/coup situation runs way deeper than the NYT had thought.
Yikes! Wait until he gets a load of the NAM scores!.
If he thinks "white suburban moms" were angry, wait until the "black ghetto moms" get on his case.
But of course he won't say "black ghetto moms", will he?
As La Griffe du Lion rigorously and methodically explained several years ago, if the average white kids' test scores start dropping (due to harder Common Core questions) black scores and Mexican scores are going to plummet.
Arne may be ready to b!tchslap the suburban white wimmins now, but what is he going to do to explain away a doubling of the racial test gap in 2018?
Blame the teachers ... again? Still racist after all these years?
Duncan has a serious disorder... I saw him speak in California a few years ago. I've never met a white guy more addicted to throwing down the race card. Whatever the question is, whatever the difficulty we face, he will find a way to attach it to invidious white privilege. The source of the problem in his mind will always be "white people." It's like a tick or a stammer with him. Unbelievable. You'd think libs at this point would start to get embarrassed a little, feeling a little bit awkward and uncomfortable with the incessant white bashing; it's like listening to a song that just goes back and forth between the V and I chord. Apparently not.
Common core will be totally useless in most urban schools. To me it is just a waste of taxpayers money and since when have ego-tripping educrats ever cared about this? It's just an excuse for more taxpayer subsidized feather preening by dopey, cliche spewing women and liberals.
---anony2---
Forget the kids. Arnie's learning disability is the real problem.
Not to beat a dead horse, but it really would be amazing to see an article that included the line "some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from 'black urban moms who — all of a sudden — their children aren’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t the source of the problem.'”
BTW, this, from the article: "their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” What's with the screwed up subject-verb agreement?
Duncan is in the Cabinet because he played basketball with Obama in Hyde Park because he had worked for financier John W. Rogers, who was Michelle's brother's team captain on the Princeton basketball team.
Why do 100% of our children need to be schooled to go to Harvard and the like, when only 20% will actually do so?
Would it not be better to create a rigorous curriculum for our children to go to junior collages?
p.s. being designed by two multistate consortia with some $350 million in federal money - 350 million - REALLY!
p.s. Bad white middle class moms. How many times have we heard Obama say that “he is working for the middle class” - again REALLY? His elitist administration hates the middle class.
Per Steve, Duncan is not going anywhere. Obama just doesn't care. Why would he? Obama is President for Life. I'm sure he will rig up some excuse to just rule by decree forever as he's practically doing already.
Duncan's disdain of White, married, suburban moms is the result of his religion. Which posits White original sin and redemption by ... Barack. Or whatever Lightworker with lots of melanin comes around. And yes that religion, of White upper class people, is prevalent in all the elites: business, law, media, entertainment, government, finance, etc.
It has limited appeal to working class Whites however, and only really appeals to White women aspiring to be upper class and deeply feminized White guys.
The net of all this of course is to EXPLODE homeschooling via MOOCs and whatnot. Both News/Fox and Pearson (parent of the FT) are heavily investing into online learning ala the Khan Academy.
Why hassle with the Common Core designed to screw over White kids to "close the gap" or whatever for AA purposes and religious fervor, when your kid can learn at home? For cheap. And bonus be away from negative peer influence!
Already here in OC I see commercials for the Capistrano Connections on White Suburban Mom friendly channels: History, Science, Discovery, BBC America.
There is big money in disintermediation, removing the dead hand of education bureaucracy following an idiot religion and NAM-pleasing Whitey-baiting junk. By delivering it online and "flipped."* See the Music industry, publishing, movies, etc.
*A "flipped" online or otherwise class is where the students watch the online lecture, reviewing and rewinding to repeat key concepts, and the instructor asks them in class (or online) questions to verify if they understood the material. As Steve has noted, computers are VERY good at drill and kill, the rote memorization and skill development that forms the bedrock of much learning. Examples being "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" and various math and language flashcard apps.
The money in this is why Pearson and News/Fox are investing heavily in this stuff.
Is anyone starting to get the feeling that "Common Core" is going to be every bit the clusterf*ck of a disaster for the edumakshunal industry that Obamacare has been for the healthcare industry?
These people don't have any earthly clue what they're doing.
What's worse, they don't even have any earthly clue that they don't have any earthly clue what they're doing.
They're literally clueless.
And clueless about their cluelessness.
And don't go telling me not to worry on account of everything will be A-Okay because "Pancake Algorithm" and his trusty sidekick, Melinda, are on the job.
Those are the very same folks who gave us "Vista" and "Windows 8" and "Microsoft Bob".
HOMESCHOOLING FTW.
Don't forget, he also had a big cameo in "Freakonomics"
Last add, here is the announcement of Pearson's investment in Voxy English Learning Online. The very good analysis of News Corp and Common Core is here.
Basically, Common Core is for News Corp. (now Fox I guess), Harper Collins, Apple, Microsoft, etc. a way to SELL NATIONALLY to schools.
The education market BEFORE COMMON CORE had State by State requirements, often quite lengthy and unique, meaning there was not much national profit in that market, save for ancillary things like computers and so on.
What Common Core does (from the standpoint of businesses who invested in Obama) is create one NATIONAL market they can sell: tablets, APPS APPS APPS, textbooks, online APP APP APP textbooks* and so on.
And of course they make money on those fleeing the McDonald's type garbage that schools will become as the lowest common denominator effect or "we can't flunk NAMs!" goes into national effect.
*The reason I typed APPS APPS APPS is that the markup on apps is much higher than a textbook. Yes a Textbook can be pricey, but they are only purchased once a decade. The printing costs can be high -- they can't be printed cheaply because they have to stand up.
What makes Apps so attractive is that companies (say Apple, or News/Fox, or Pearson) can sell the App AS A SERVICE. And collect ALL THAT DATA. To sell, or use, later.
So they get not just a "lumpy" bit of cash every ten years, but a NATIONAL STREAM of money in a NATIONAL MARKET EVERY YEAR! AND they store and collect that data.
Its market research heaven. Want to sell to kids with learning disabilities, or diabetes, or their parents? Well the data is all there. Forget the NSA, Apple, Microsoft, News/Fox**, Pearson, etc. are the ones who are really dangerous.
** News Corp recently split into Fox, which I BELIEVE but could be wrong has retained the high-growth prospects of the online and educational stuff, and News Corp which has the low-growth dead-weight newspaper publishing stuff.
"I've never met a white guy more addicted to throwing down the race card."
How about Father Michael, another friend of Obama? He seems to attract these types of whites.
"Absolom Humblebug said...
Duncan has a serious disorder... I saw him speak in California a few years ago. I've never met a white guy more addicted to throwing down the race card."
Yeah, Duncan is a tool. His rhetoric is pretty typical of white bureaucrats who have to serve a mostly black population. His ilk were much more common in the 70s and 80s before blacks started taking on those positions themselves.
So now we can call this Centrally Planned education fiasco...ObamaCORE.
"Single moms" = Good
"Suburban moms" = Ungood
"White suburban moms" = Doubleplusungood
Yes, he really said that. ...
And "school" is the antecedent of "they". Yes, he really said that. Duncan is not smart.
"edumakshunal" = edumakashunal
Sheesh - I can't spell worth a d*mn.
Blogger Dennis Dale said...
Forget the kids. Arnie's learning disability is the real problem.
👍👍👍
Every once in a while, their true feeling slip out.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of who got that $350 million. It would be a who's who of the power structure of the American educational establishment.
When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw map of the U.S. where if you picked up a wooden piece, you could see what product that state produced. Underneath Florida was a picture of an orange.
In a new version of that map, under New Jersey, they should have "Education Scams." It could show a guy wearing a mortarboard and a burglar's mask.
"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”"
And a lot of those white suburban moms voted for Obama. Oh well, you get what you vote for.
Ha ha ... The Good Wife just referred to Illegal Immigrants as Undocumented Workers.
Married women lean republican.
"Anonymous said...
Why do 100% of our children need to be schooled to go to Harvard and the like, when only 20% will actually do so?
Would it not be better to create a rigorous curriculum for our children to go to junior collages?"
This is the first mistake made by liberals - the phrase "our children". There is no such thing as "our children". You may have children. I may have children. But "we" do not have children. Not any more, at least.
If Common Core really is a tougher standard, imagine the nasty surprise Arne et al. are for. They couldn't be bothered to read basic stuff on IQ distributions, so they will be shocked, completely shocked to see The Gap growing much wider. Priceless!
I just wanna know, did someone get this on video? Can it be thrown into campaign ads? Or is this yet another liberal "gaffe" that will go unnoticed by the vast public because there is no army of stalkers following libs around with cameras the way they to do republicans?
"There is no such thing as "our children". You may have children. I may have children. But "we" do not have children. Not any more, at least."
So how does everybody like the sound of this variation of that sentiment:
"There is no such thing as "our fellow Americans". You may care about and guard the interests of your friends, relatives and the other Americans like you. I may care about and guard the interests of my friends, relatives and the other Americans like me. But "we" DO NOT CARE about or guard the interests of Americans who are not our friends, relatives or other people like us. Not any more, at least."
I sure don't. The people at the top and in charge have been using this kind of thinking to reject their fellow Americans -- us -- and only care about themselves for years now. They are destroying us and the country.
If we all get mad and say to heck with people we don't know, don't agree with, etc., where will we ever find the strength to grab back the excessive power and money that the elites have taken away from us?
"Duncan has a serious disorder"
i don't call him secretary slam dunkin' for nothing. guy is a 360 whirlwind slam dunk on the douche o meter.
"These people don't have any earthly clue what they're doing. What's worse, they don't even have any earthly clue that they don't have any earthly clue what they're doing. They're literally clueless. And clueless about their cluelessness."
the clueless who don't realize they are clueless are the most dangerous kind.
from american thinker -
Obama: The Most Dangerous of Morons
http://tinyurl.com/kq5juam
Anonymous said...
HOMESCHOOLING FTW.
11/17/13, 7:01 PM
==================
I wish people (this is mostly conservatives, but you see it from the centre and left as well) would stop lionising homeschooling. It's taking a perfectly valid *option* for educating children and pushing it hard to hide the fact that they've given up on taking back vast swathes of public schooling.
It's like establishment conservative types loudly (and I mean LOUDLY) proclaiming that country/exurban living is so much better/cleaner/more moral than those nasty cities. I personally prefer the suburbs, but I try not to put a gloss on the fact that I couldn't afford (financially or in terms of safety) to live in any Western city.
People should be able to live in cities if they want to, and just turf their children to the local public school if they want to. That's how you raise the birthrate - make it easy for the halfway responsible types, which is the flipside of making it harder for, uh, less responsible people. And Establishment people have clearly given up on Affordable Family Formation. That's why the lionisation of homeschooling makes me so queasy - it's a statement of defeat and lowered expectations.
@anon 1:38
>it's a statement of defeat and lowered expectations.
You're absolutely right it is. However, we've been defeated and we had best lower our expectations.
What's with the screwed up subject-verb agreement?
They've been using plural pronouns in singular context for so long to mollify feminists that they've forgotten how to do subject-verb agreement even when they could.
they say these things because they know it is expected of them, and because whenever you need someone to beat up on, a designated enemy, the white working class is all that is left.
The question is why and how this state of affairs came to pass. But I seem to be the only person interested in this. The rest of america seems satisfied to keep things superficial, to be confined to a cargo cult version of sociopolitics.
What's with the screwed up subject-verb agreement?
Schooling?
Anonymous 1:38, mass education is what ruined WASP fertility in the late 19th century. Kids who are grilled and drilled don't know anything about playful interactions that later become seduction. The sexual market is left to proles who breed like animals. Civilization becomes stupider over time.
Home schooling is the only consistent way these days to make the natural elites reproduce properly. They become overdisciplined in mass education settings.
"notsaying said...
"There is no such thing as "our children". You may have children. I may have children. But "we" do not have children. Not any more, at least.""
So how does everybody like the sound of this variation of that sentiment:
"There is no such thing as "our fellow Americans"."
Unfortunately, to a large degree, this is now true. People in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Berkeley, Madison, Washington D.C., and any number of other places are NOT my fellow Americans. They are not. They have no proper conception what the term "American nation" even means. And they certainly do not consider me to be an equal, deserving of any consideration, so why should I return the favor? Screw them.
Moreover, and this was my point, you must by now realize that the phrase "our children" is nothing more than an inducement for you to sacrifice the interests and well-being of you and yours for the "holy other" - blacks, mexicans, immigrants, refugees. When they say "our children" what they really mean is the children of black ghetto mamas and illegal alien mestizas whom YOU should take care of. What they mean is that you should forego having children, or should not have as many, so that you can instead spend your wealth on the children of other peopele, not like you.
It's a con. And we should recognize it as such.
"Dave Pinsen said...
Married women lean republican."
Married women lean Republican (not republican) overall, and in conservative states. In liberal states, like California, they still probably lean Democrat. Which is fine by me. Let the Obama camp make war on part of it's own constituency. They voted for it - let them live with it's consequences.
"Big Bill said...
Yikes! Wait until he gets a load of the NAM scores!.
If he thinks "white suburban moms" were angry, wait until the "black ghetto moms" get on his case."
They won't because, by and large, they don't care about the education of thier children. It is not black ghetto moms who have created and nursed the national psychosis about "The Gap".
Anon 1:38am:
Yeah, it's a little like seeing people say "Hey, food purchased in supermarkets is routinely disease- and toxin-ridden thanks to the collapse of safety inspections and practical immunity of rich companies to lawsuit or regulatory action. But raising your own food rocks, so go us!" Yes, it's possible to find ways to live well even when you live in a shitty, dysfunctional society--as anyone who has ever known middle-class educated people from the third world knows. You *can* filter your own water, import your food from somewhere safer, hire private security to protect you when the cops won't, etc. But maybe it'd be bettter to live in a first-world country where you didn't have to do such things.
Actually, you can close the gap by raising or lowering standards. Give every high school senior a test requiring him to write his name and count to ten, and the gap will be much smaller than it is on standardized test scores now. Similarly, give every high school senior the California Bar exam, and the gap will be quite small--almost nobody will pass, black or white.
Resoundingly similar to his boss, this guy is the personification of gall. I'm sure he and David Coleman finish each other's sentences.
Responding to his imperious remarks (at the risk of dignifying them), I'm sure the black, urban moms are all very enthusiastic about Common Core.
Let's ask them...cue crickets...
Steve from Detroit
Love it, common core is like body exam without clothes. You just can not hide behind low standard any more.
Anonymous 1:38
THANK YOU. We live in NYC (my husband can't do his career elsewhere), and if I didn't have to worry about either:
1. Ensuring he made enough so I could stay home and homeschool.
2. Paying 60% more to live in a neighborhood with good public schools.
OR
3. Making enough to pay for private school.
I think we could have an extra 1-2 kids. But I have this crazy idea that my kids shouldn't go to school with half-way feral children or children who don't speak English at home, which is my main option in the more affordable areas of NYC. I'm not even asking for a top caliber curriculum. I'm asking for my kids to go to school with people who *speak their language* and who are not *actively violent.* This should not be a tall order, but we've found it is, if you're middle class.
While we're at it, I'd love if we could be open about our politics without being blackballed from our respective industries, but if wishes were horses...
It was easy for Arne to feel like a god while trying to improve the incredibly poor results of the CPS. But now that he's moved on to taking over all of public ed., he's apparently upset that people with 3 digit IQs are talking back.
Most of the ladies in my neighborhood have graduate degrees. We see the doublespeak in our kids' math assignments and don't even know what is being asked. (Funny how STEM parents drill their kids on old-fashioned math at home.) We see how poorly our kids write and how few books they are required to read. Yet CC moves towards reading even fewer books.
How dare we have opinions that something is very very wrong with education.
What about white suburban dads?
UH OH, PART XX!
http://news.yahoo.com/george-zimmerman-arrested-florida-following-disturbance-call-191020842--abc-news-topstories.html
I like to think of Arne Duncan as Team Obama's Richie Incognito.
"suburban whites" = not jews
Yet CC moves towards reading even fewer books
I don't remember reading that many books in HS in the 60s, and I was in accelerated classes. Most all my reading was done outside of class. Schools have a way of inducing boredom with the most interesting subjects.
OT, this Rob Ford guy seems to be going through a nice little manic phase...
Most of the ladies in my neighborhood have graduate degrees. We see the doublespeak in our kids' math assignments and don't even know what is being asked.
This. My son's 4th grade teacher doesn't understand what the doublespeak means most of the time-- who could? It's nothing but a bunch of nonsense.
Mr. Anon:
It's a con. And we should recognize it as such.
We feed, they breed. Its a recipe that is guaranteed to end in disaster.
http://politi.co/1b4kf7w
Uh oh, better not lose that soccer mom vote.
"People should be able to live in cities if they want to, and just turf their children to the local public school if they want to. That's how you raise the birthrate - make it easy for the halfway responsible types, which is the flipside of making it harder for, uh, less responsible people. And Establishment people have clearly given up on Affordable Family Formation. That's why the lionisation of homeschooling makes me so queasy - it's a statement of defeat and lowered expectations."
I'm a fan of homeschooling, but you raise great points. Like gubbler said once, conservatives have white flight. They need white unite.
"Anonymous 1:38, mass education is what ruined WASP fertility in the late 19th century. Kids who are grilled and drilled don't know anything about playful interactions that later become seduction. The sexual market is left to proles who breed like animals. Civilization becomes stupider over time.
Home schooling is the only consistent way these days to make the natural elites reproduce properly. They become overdisciplined in mass education settings."
Interesting theory, albeit one I've never heard before.
Hey "Truth", I thought that the blacks loved dredging up the old "One Drop Rule" to claim that people are black even when they only have a tiny fraction of African blood. By that measure, Jorge Zimmerman is as black as Idi Amin.
Mr. Anon:
"There is no such thing as "our fellow Americans"."
Unfortunately, to a large degree, this is now true. People in San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Berkeley, Madison, Washington D.C., and any number of other places are NOT my fellow Americans. They are not. They have no proper conception what the term "American nation" even means.
The saddest thing of all is that so many of my kin and friends of my youth are these "people in San Francisco, Boston...DC..."
I am not young. These are not just Gen Xers or Millenials who have been marinated in globo-progressivism all of their lives. These are not only Boomers, but people born in the '20s and '30s, some of whom even consider themselves conservative. There is not one piece of progressive folly with which they have not fallen in line, and the vicious nonsense they believe about "fellow citizens" who haven't, boggles the mind.
The edjumacation system is wholly and utterly corrupt. It is impossible to "fix" because the beams are eaten through by parasitical termites, the paint is peeling off the walls, the rats have chewed the electrical wiring, roaches swarm in the plumbing and silverfish have gnawed up all the books.
The only solution is to shut down the entire system of public education and start anew. And of course that's never going to happen. So on it goes, a cesspool of corruption in a system run by vicious psychotics serving delusional neurotics.
Whiskley what is your problem, White women that are upper middle class in South OC don't have many problems. There are many that are able to stay at home since hubby has a 100,000 income or higher. I bet you have never been married or divorce since many women in Orange County would probably not put up with you. In fact Steve is right a lot of upper middle class whites in Orange County are now from the east since there is lots of LaCross teams in high school and ice Hockey. Hello, moderate liberalism in the OC, yeah goodbye the old right stuff that Whiskley likes. There are plenty of moderates and moderate liberals that are better than harder left anti-white liberals and conservatives, sorry.
Also, many suburban moms in some places like the San Gabriel Mountains or Irvine are Asian and the hubbies also make good money.
" By that measure, Jorge Zimmerman is as black as Idi Amin."
Great, then hop off his jock.
Mr. Anon
I see the long term Americans of all groups as potential natural allies.
Clearly you and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of topics. But guess what -- we do about the injustice of the resources of the 99% being redirected to the new people brought in to satisfy the 1%. And as a matter of fact, it does really kill me to know there's millions of long term Americans who feel too poor to have a second or third child who nevertheless pay thousands to educate and take care of newcomers' children.
Whatever you think of long term Americans who are poor and/or minorities is that they have the most to lose by our current immigration policies.
The only way the long term Americans are going to stay above water is to unite when it is to their advantage. There's no need to agree about everything.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/d-c-awash-in-contracts-lobbying-wealth/article_53336d9b-a75f-5a1a-bb19-d46d3186a960.html
During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.
Why are we still discussing Da Gapp (my Ebonically-correct version of the phrase) as an impediment to black economic success? Affirmative Action, especially in government sector jobs, isn't going away any time soon. Every state and federal office I've ever been in seems like a jobs program for loud black women. Will any proportional decrease in test scores under Common Core change that one iota?
During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.
It's the mother of all Bubbles: the one in sovereign debt.
The edjumacation system is wholly and utterly corrupt. It is impossible to "fix" because the beams are eaten through by parasitical termites, the paint is peeling off the walls, the rats have chewed the electrical wiring, roaches swarm in the plumbing and silverfish have gnawed up all the books.
It's impossible to "fix" because it's already working very well, performing exactly the function is was designed to perform.
You didn't think the public schools were created to educate, did you?
Duncan's snark is upsetting but what's ironic about it is that the kids who really are brilliant, GATE kids (IQ>130), most of whom of course are White or Asian, are ill-served by Common Core and everyone knows it. Both sides of the equation, gifted ed specialists looking at CC and CC promoters looking at gifted, have stated that CC in its current form does nothing to address the special needs of genuinely brilliant kids or is even harmful.
Sargon
"Like gubbler said once, conservatives have white flight. They need white unite".
If we had any unity we wouldn't have been so willing to give up so much turf. Urban Whites of yore never really felt his neighbor had his back. Whites will have group only unity after all other options have
I really like notsaying's term, "long term Americans." Very nice. I like it even better with a small adjustment, "long haul Americans," to emphasize being in it for the long haul, past-present-future. That also welcomes Blacks who share these concerns.
Sargon
has anyone asked what Asian's think about common core? Do they love it? Does Common Core make Asian-Americans look even better or exposes them as well?
It's a given that any "common" system, including public schools themselves, is going to be irrelevant or harmful to "gifted" kids. The best grade school teachers I had were the ones who recognized that they had nothing to teach me at that level, so they gave me some books and let me work on my own thing in the corner. It's simply not possible to adjust 3rd-grade material so it's challenging for the one kid in the room who's at an 8th-grade level, no matter how dedicated the teacher.
Schools didn't have separate gifted programs when I was going, and I don't know whether they're particularly helpful; but it seems obvious that any program with the word "Common" in the name will pull resources away from the kids at both extremes.
"The best grade school teachers I had were the ones who recognized that they had nothing to teach me at that level, so they gave me some books and let me work on my own thing in the corner."
Same with me in high school math.
Robert Hume
Arnie's biting the hand that feeds him. Clever fellow though. The suburban moms will now try to outdo each other in being more outraged by whatever it is Arnie's kvetching about.
They might not actually send their own kids to the ghetto school, but they'll be banging the drums to get their neighbors kid hijacked. Ahh soccer moms.
"The best grade school teachers I had were the ones who recognized that they had nothing to teach me at that level, so they gave me some books and let me work on my own thing in the corner."
Same with me in high school math.
I had this experience in my 6th-grade math class.
Cail Corishev & Robert Hume,
You're right about "common" anything being a bad fit for either extreme, and your experiences in school are probably characteristic of smart kids of our generation. So no surprises there...
What does surprise me is that everyone is so explicit now about CC not fitting. Gifted educators have made it very clear.* CC's own designers have made it very clear. Without considerable added effort from the school and teacher, CC simply does not address the needs of high-aptitude kids.
(And to twist the knife in Duncan, expect 82% percent of those kids to be White and 14% East Asian.)
Sargon
* For example the National Association for Gifted Children wrote "Although the CCSS are considered to be more rigorous than most current state standards, they fall short in meeting the specific needs of gifted learners, and if held strictly to the standard, could actually limit learning."
What I don't get is why anyone ever expected public schools to be suitable for gifted kids. Do we expect food stamps to provide 7-course meals with flavors detectable by the most sensitive palates? Do we expect public housing to provide mansions with a separate bedroom and bath for each family member?
So why do we think government schooling will be able to provide the best quality education for every child at every level of intelligence and interest? It's just silly.
Cail, spot on. Our Founders understood that public Ed should be used to select the best out of the rubbish. "By this means . . . the best geniusses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expense, so far as the grammar schools go." - See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/articles/jefferson-on-public-education-defying-conventional-wisdom.html
CC has this bleeding heart attitude that all should be ready for higher ed. Why?
Cail Corishev said...
What I don't get is why anyone ever expected public schools to be suitable for gifted kids.
Because it isn't hard to make them so. You just have to 1) track and 2) convince the teachers in the gifted track to mostly leave the kids alone.
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