Khan Academy and the Common Core Standards
Salman Khan, founder of the world renowned Khan Academy, talks with Bill McCallum, a lead author of the Common Core Standards, about the mathematics standards. What I like about this is that they are talking about the actual standards. Most conversations, knowingly or not, revolve around the poor implementation of the Common Core Standards, not the quality of the standards themselves. Something everyone should understand is that the standards are standards (goals), not curricula (lesson plans).
I think there are problems that need to be addressed in schools. I'm sure anyone commenting will provide plenty of examples of how things are going south in schools; Teachers being told they can't speak their minds regarding the enforced curricula; Parents' concerns regarding the curricula being ignored. etc... Parent and teacher complaints are usually about curricula and the way they're enforced. Those aren't really issues with the Common Core Standards themselves. There is no such thing as the "Common Core Curriculum." Common Core Standards are just grade level goals. How those goals are met is by the divers curricula made across the country. Who makes those curricula? Lots of people make lots of different curricula. There's curricula made by state, county, and city school boards, public and private schools, teachers, tutors, and parents, textbook companies and private educational ventures like Mathnasium and Khan Academy. There have been bad curricula before the Common Core Standards and there will continue to be bad curricula. There were bad teachers before and and will be after. There have been and will be bad school boards and administrators who show little respect to the opinions of parents and teachers. These are issues that should be addressed, but they aren't issues with the Common Core Standards. I would suggest that they are issues that are typically inherent in public education (public day care might be more appropriate description).
Having standards is not necessarily a bad thing. So much of industry and technology relies on standards being built. Railroad ties, USB, Email Protocol, HTTP, IP, HTML, most all programming languages, sizes for screws and bolts, file formats, firearm ammunition, the base-10 system etc... If education was mostly privately run, then we would have seen more standards built and improved on much earlier than this. I'd like to point out that standard in industry are adaptive and evolve over time because they often get reviewed and updated. They also often allow for variance or for people/corporations to do their own thing; think of Apple making lightning cables instead of just using Micro USB. I hope that the Common Core Standards are adaptive in this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto_st...
Even the difference between a de jure standard (centrally enforced) and de facto standard (dominant by mass choice) is one of adoption and implementation, not quality of standards.
The other outcry people have about the Common Core Standards is in regards to the political and money games that are being played around them. Those are problems that should be dealt with, but they aren't necessarily problems with the standards themselves. The Common Core Standards might suck, or they might be great. I just hope more people will judge the standards based on the standards themselves, not on the problems inherent in our political and public day care systems.
I think there are problems that need to be addressed in schools. I'm sure anyone commenting will provide plenty of examples of how things are going south in schools; Teachers being told they can't speak their minds regarding the enforced curricula; Parents' concerns regarding the curricula being ignored. etc... Parent and teacher complaints are usually about curricula and the way they're enforced. Those aren't really issues with the Common Core Standards themselves. There is no such thing as the "Common Core Curriculum." Common Core Standards are just grade level goals. How those goals are met is by the divers curricula made across the country. Who makes those curricula? Lots of people make lots of different curricula. There's curricula made by state, county, and city school boards, public and private schools, teachers, tutors, and parents, textbook companies and private educational ventures like Mathnasium and Khan Academy. There have been bad curricula before the Common Core Standards and there will continue to be bad curricula. There were bad teachers before and and will be after. There have been and will be bad school boards and administrators who show little respect to the opinions of parents and teachers. These are issues that should be addressed, but they aren't issues with the Common Core Standards. I would suggest that they are issues that are typically inherent in public education (public day care might be more appropriate description).
Having standards is not necessarily a bad thing. So much of industry and technology relies on standards being built. Railroad ties, USB, Email Protocol, HTTP, IP, HTML, most all programming languages, sizes for screws and bolts, file formats, firearm ammunition, the base-10 system etc... If education was mostly privately run, then we would have seen more standards built and improved on much earlier than this. I'd like to point out that standard in industry are adaptive and evolve over time because they often get reviewed and updated. They also often allow for variance or for people/corporations to do their own thing; think of Apple making lightning cables instead of just using Micro USB. I hope that the Common Core Standards are adaptive in this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto_st...
Even the difference between a de jure standard (centrally enforced) and de facto standard (dominant by mass choice) is one of adoption and implementation, not quality of standards.
The other outcry people have about the Common Core Standards is in regards to the political and money games that are being played around them. Those are problems that should be dealt with, but they aren't necessarily problems with the standards themselves. The Common Core Standards might suck, or they might be great. I just hope more people will judge the standards based on the standards themselves, not on the problems inherent in our political and public day care systems.
Here:
http://www.usworldclassmath.webs.com/usv...
and here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worl...
and here (from 20 years ago; nothing new even then):
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/11/news/1...
(But note: "STUDENTS in Germany and Japan watch just as much television as U.S. students, and U.S. teachers assign more homework and spend more class time discussing it than teachers in Japan and Germany.")
This analysis of that report from the Annenberg Foundation found "no answers"
"In general, preliminary analyses shed little light on factors which might account for the differences between our performance in mathematics and science, and our performance at the fourth and eighth grades. Further analyses are needed to provide more definitive insights on these subjects."
here: http://www.learner.org/workshops/math/TI...
and here:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/rvp/pubaf/chron...
where it was found: "Almost 40 percent of students on average were taught science by teachers who reported a low level of confidence in their preparation to teach science.
But the study directors noted that among specific countries, the degree of teacher confidence did not necessarily relate to student achievement in the subject. In the US, for example, 87 percent of students were taught mathematics by teachers with high confidence, compared to 18 percent in Thailand and 8 percent in Japan. Yet while Japanese students attained a considerably higher average achievement than their US counterparts, Thai students fared poorer than the Americans did."
and here (from 2009. The more we wring our hands and wail, the farther behind the kids fall. Perhaps the problem is parents who tell their kids that schools are evil):
http://www.geographic.org/country_ranks/...
And again from a different survey with the same results:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/educat...
Same study as above with more detail of reporting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23...
You can argue for the future of capitalism, but here and now, the facts appear to support socialized public education ... if education is part of a national culture of academic achievement. I believe that the problem with America is the strong anti-intellectual undercurrent that erodes respect for formal education. You do not have to look to hard around here to find denunciations of public education K-12 and college and university. But Richard Hofstadter wrote about that 50 years ago ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intell...
... so we are only reaping what we sowed.
Common core has basic problems but just ranting against government in general does not address them. We elect local school boards here in America. In fact, Kentucky pioneered in the 1830s with local school board elections in which women who owned property in their own names could vote. Public education was always a cornerstone of our democracy. Now, we can take issue with all of that on many grounds. Maybe vouchers in a totally privatized system would be better. But consider that if the state is going to give every parent, say $6000 to spend on their children's education, should the state then not at least ensure that the money is going to a vendor who meets some standard?
For myself, I look at the rest of the world, and Japan and Finland and Germany and all those countries that bury the USA in math and science all have nationally unified systems. Now, I think that diversity is better, but I certainly understand the appeal of looking at success and wanting to replicate it.
Parents need to get involved to solve this, teachers need to open their eyes and teach the truth and the government needs to get lost. I'm for privatizing schools & home schooling. School boards are elected, but have seen what happens at some of those school board meetings when parents dare question the intent of common core and what the results will be? It gets ugly and they are silenced. (red flag!)
And, I guess you missed it, but I've talked at length in here about my 10 years in a public school....
Where does the state get that $6000 except by stealing it from the parents and then giving it back to them and expecting the parents to grovel in thanks? If state driven education was so wonderful, then the USSR would still be in business and leading the world in Nobel Prizes. They are not! They flunked and so will America if we continue to allow the Utopians to impose their ivory tower pedagogy on our children. They are our children not the states. We know better than they what our children's needs are.
Also, it is not (theoretically) necessary to _steal_ from everyone else in order to provide government services. Constitutionalists have long argued these. I am not entirely convinced, but I acknowledge the intellectual grounding created by other libertarians.
The US is not being buried by other countries in Math and Science. Nationalized education systems are not the point.
One aspect is the large numbers of immigrants that our education systems handle. Actually, a strength of this country Other nations cherry-pick the students that take the tests.
It is true that our systems have not encouraged kids into in to Math and Science. Hence the STEM initiatives.
The MOST IMPORTANT factor is the Indians
and Chinese population numbers, and those numbers of bright kids that they have. That's why we have to encourage our kids into knowledge sectors. I'm reminded of the woman President of a Women's College who required all entering freshman into easily accomplishable Computer course. We have more than a million kids dropping out of HS annually.
Science teachers question Khan because of factual errors..
Common Core is a BASELINE of Knowledge topics to be covered for a given subject. Nothing wrong with such.
Harry M
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/...