If you have had an experience with some aspect of Common Core illustrating a loss of local control, please share it here.
If you have had an experience with some aspect of Common Core illustrating a loss of local control, please share it here.
We used to have really neat field trips which give students a great experience they may not otherwise get. These included Antelope Island, Bees baseball game, symphony, museums, etc. Now we only get one field trip per year. Most field trips are good experiences and not that hard to tie to the core. However we are treated as if it would never occur to us to do this. We have to write about it and document how it is tied to the core using criteria from our community counsel.
As a teacher I feel so overwhelmed with having to document so much data that may or may not be accurate. The attitude is not about doing the right thing but rather doing what we are being mandated to do. When our principal was asked why we have so many data meetings she answered, “the purpose of data is so that we have something to show the parents when we go to community council meetings.”
Enough! You must stop this madness. You are harming students in Utah by spreading your misinformation. You are harming teachers by creating a distraction and undermining their valiant efforts to improve education. The Core does not create robots or indoctrinate students in any federal agenda. It does not prevent teachers from meeting the individual needs of students. It does not prevent differentiation of instruction or anything of the like. The Standards do not require any particular curriculum; districts, schools and teachers make those decisions. Please for the good of teachers and students, stop this nonsense.
You are misinformed, and wrong.
The standards allow input from local districts, but explicitly prohibits changes or deletions.
So local educators can only ADD to the standards, and even then their input is capped at 15% of the total.
The facts are indisputable. The question about why these changes have been made are being answered, slowly, and the unfolding picture is horrifying. Being ideologically deaf and blind is your own choice, but the time for dragging the naive along with you is over.
Agreed John Meisner!! I have been teaching in Utah for 5 years and cannot see how following the CCI will be detrimental to my students. I have studied the standards and find no fault in how we are being asked to implement them.
D Jones, here is the problem with how Utah has implemented the standards if you were unaware of the issue.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/dr-wright-slams-usoe-implementation-of-cc-math/
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/dr-david-wright-vs-usoe-8-0-for-dr-wright/
We also have much better options like this:
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/solution-utah-should-adopt-californias-math-standards/
…ah, but there are just as many issues with the California Standards. They are good; but, they are also vague, inexplicit and there are too many of them to be practical. We should focus on revising the Utah Core to improve it rather than through the baby out with the bath-water and adopt another flawed set of standards.
Thank you! Completely agree. Standards are NOT curriculum. Professional teachers recognize the incredible value that common core brings to the classroom and children’s (including my own kids) education.
Nowhere on this site will you see the claim that standards are curriculum. However, that is the plan to bring it all together. Look up Bill Gates’ speech on Youtube.
But you have articles like, Utah Teacher Exposes Anti-Family Online Curriculum, that convey that message to the non-professional along with other false claims like “Utah has two new, conflicting sets of educational standards to juggle” when the fact is that the Utah Core is just our set and ordering of the CC standards (the CC is like the buffet, the Utah core is like our plate. We don’t have to eat the entire buffet).
I don’t like miss-information and this website is full of it. So you don’t like something about CC. Fine. Make valid reasonable arguments against it then and leave it at that. Don’t craft convoluted claims to sway the already miss-informed public. You are just muddying the waters and spoiling the name of a good thing. Granted it isn’t perfect yet, but rather than trying to tear it down all together, get on board with the review/revision process that is already underway (new updated version of the standards role out 2016-2017 school year–AND UTAH EDUCATORS WERE THE ONES WHO REVIEWED AND REVISED THEM) …YES I’M YELLING CAUSE I’M UPSET!!! :)
P.S. California’s standards are great, but there is too much to teach in a given year. Acclaimed California educators will tell you they have there own flaws. so lets do what you guys argue for: fix *Utah’s* standards, not tearing them down so we can adopt someone else’s.
Tyler, California’s Green dot standards were among the very best in the nation. You must not understand how the Green Dot system works. They matched their standards to Japan and Singapore and then backed them off by 6 months. Specific standards with green dots next to them specify to the teacher that 85% of class time should be on those standards. Others are peripheral and should be lightly touched on. Read more here and see the amazing results they have achieved. So far CCSS has been a total bomb.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/solution-utah-should-adopt-californias-math-standards/
CC is not a buffet. When Utah signed onto them we were required to adopt them “as written” because we joined the federally funded SBAC consortium. This post shows the proof.
https://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/letter-to-dr-menlove-please-verify-utah-core-common-core/
The core revision process is a joke. The USOE has never cared about quality standards in Utah. If they had, they wouldn’t have fought so hard not to revise our D rated 2002 math standards in 2006-7. We wound up with A- rated standards (Fordham rating) and the USOE fought this on every angle they could. “Too expensive”, “too soon from our last standards”, didn’t want to adopt CA’s standards because we didn’t want to be like other states (HA, and THEN we adopt Common Core to be like EVERY state). Then as soon as CCSS was announced they signed on through Race to the Top and other federal grants in order to try and get federal money. It’s all a money game.
You must not understand why I am not a fan of them. They are great standards (So are CCSM–in fact CCSM’s are often more precise). I have nothing against California’s standards themselves, but there are too many of them. Less is more. Many teachers in California agree. Check out Henri Piccitto’s blog at mathedpage.com. He is a very respected teacher nation wide. His comments on California’s and CCSM’s standards are very enlightening and unbiased.
…Also, If you think the core revision process is a joke, imagine that process enlarged to the point where we write our own standards, because that is exactly what will happen if CCSM goes away. So what do you suggest? You deride what we were given then claim something very similar. Then you don’t like the revisions made by the same people who legally would have to write new ones if we got ride of what we have.
Frankly I think you guys are so stuck to your agenda you have lost all objectivity. You make make your claim and find arguments to support it rather than use information to inform your position.
That mathedpage.com appears to be down. Personally, I would like to see states go back and get away from state standards and let districts and schools implement their own. If they choose to use a “path” of education via what the state has outlined, fine, but there needs to be much greater variety of learning experiences. I often hear from school admins and teachers that every child is different and has a different learning style and how in each classroom there are several years of different skills among the students, yet common state standards assigned by date of birth is absolutely harmful to students who are behind that level and destructive of the excitement of learning for those being held back. There are better models and if schools were free to innovate, I think we would see some really interesting things happen in the education world. Every day the business world changes according to the demands of the market, but that never happens in education because we have powerful entities like the NEA/UEA and others who value the status quo.
CA’s standards are modeled after the best in the world and their results during the last decade are astounding. If you read that article you can see they achieved a 6x increase in the number of low SES and minority students proficient in algebra by 8th grade. Statewide the figure was 3x overall. What other state did that? As for the quantity, if you look at the actual standards marked with a green dot, that’s where you spend 85% of your time which dramatically reduces the number of standards. The others are only there as a “touch on this concept” type of thing from what I understand.