A republican congressional candidate just came by our door. Very nice gent. His three primary issues: stopping common core and returning control to the district, fixed terms and stricken food stamp restrictions (no cigarettes, no Cosmo magazines).
I told him I honestly haven't formed an opinion about the common core yet, but this issue affects my family the most. I know the transitions have been poorly launched, but I'm not sure the entire concept is bad or needs to be thrown out. The woman accompanying him is a teacher and said that they have lost all control over their curriculum.
After working in a (very good) private school I have a better appreciation for standards and testing. I saw some interesting data on teachers grade distributions vs student SAT scores. You don't want a tyranny of the teacher or a cult of personality. There is an inevitable human bias. I've come to believe there has to be some common knowledge standards and assessments to determine a students knowledge level. Someone has to determine what those standards are. I have a lot more faith in education experts than I do politicians. Certainly teachers and parents should give feedback, but we need educational expertise we can trust, not votes.
It's my first year with public school, but nothing I've encountered has been horrific. Different, but never erroneous. It's more time consuming, but that may also be because it's different than how I learned so were all learning as we go. I did encounter some crazy math division techniques. I found them to be a convoluted method, but interesting that they worked. It's not the only method they are learning though. They quickly moved onto more conventional division methods.
My candidate is pushing to return curriculum control to the district. but that seems unfair in today's society. People move frequently. We all have. I think we need a standard national curriculum to optimize the success of our students.
I told him I honestly haven't formed an opinion about the common core yet, but this issue affects my family the most. I know the transitions have been poorly launched, but I'm not sure the entire concept is bad or needs to be thrown out. The woman accompanying him is a teacher and said that they have lost all control over their curriculum.
After working in a (very good) private school I have a better appreciation for standards and testing. I saw some interesting data on teachers grade distributions vs student SAT scores. You don't want a tyranny of the teacher or a cult of personality. There is an inevitable human bias. I've come to believe there has to be some common knowledge standards and assessments to determine a students knowledge level. Someone has to determine what those standards are. I have a lot more faith in education experts than I do politicians. Certainly teachers and parents should give feedback, but we need educational expertise we can trust, not votes.
It's my first year with public school, but nothing I've encountered has been horrific. Different, but never erroneous. It's more time consuming, but that may also be because it's different than how I learned so were all learning as we go. I did encounter some crazy math division techniques. I found them to be a convoluted method, but interesting that they worked. It's not the only method they are learning though. They quickly moved onto more conventional division methods.
My candidate is pushing to return curriculum control to the district. but that seems unfair in today's society. People move frequently. We all have. I think we need a standard national curriculum to optimize the success of our students.
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