Angry parents nation-wide are calling for a November 18th protest against Common Core standards. Their reasons include:
- ever-more testing
- ever-more philanthrocapitalist dabbling
- incomprehensible homework
- unrealistic expectations
- elitist notions about the value of college
- loss of local input and control
According to Common Core, our CPS high school seniors will be evaluated on their ability to:
Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.Unfortunately, the best of our regular, non-honors CPS high school seniors usually can only:
Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.
We think that skill #2 is a fairly complex and intelligent task for 17-18 year olds. But not Common Core! According to them, skill #2 is for 6th graders.
What are your thoughts, readers? Any parents out there with opinions? Any teachers with strong feelings on Common Core?
This is crazy. I want my kid to enjoy school.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy school?! Well listen here, there are a lot more important things than "enjoying" school. Haven't you considered the importance of having your kid tested regularly with accurate and rigorous assessments in order to generate relevant data with which to measure his or her progress in achieving success in reaching national standards?
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