Common Core is illegal, but that doesn’t matter

Three federal laws explicitly prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from directing, supervising, or controlling any nationalized standards, testing, or curriculum. The U.S. Department of Education subsequently awarded $362 million to directly fund two national testing consortia to develop common nationalized assessments. The consortia funding application clearly state that they will use federal funds to…

Evidence and Concerns

A rising number of teachers, parents and taxpayers are expressing concerns about South Dakota’s adoption of the Common Core Initiative (CCI), its accompanying federal standards for states (CCSS) and its federally overseen and controlled testing arm (SBAC). Why? 1. South Dakota did not seek out CCI; the initiative was presented as an eligibility enhancement by the U.S. Department…

Think Common Core Standards Were a State Initiative?

From Utah’s Republic: • 1988: Marc Tucker became the president of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) where he joined up with Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, and Ira Magaziner to get states to move away from local control of their schools and migrate to national standards. (link) • 1990: George H. W. Bush signed an…

How We Could Fix Public Education and Why It Won’t Happen

From Laurie H Rogers:As an education advocate, I’m asked regularly how we fix our public schools. After six and a half years of advocacy, I’m no longer confident we can. Solutions exist, and they’re neither difficult nor expensive to implement. But most board directors and education administrators won’t do those things, and no one can make…

In Defense of Traditional Math

In defense of traditional math: What is reform math, anyway? Note from Laurie Rogers:When you explain the flaws of reform math and excessive constructivism to parents, they tend to see it right away. When you explain the flaws of reform math to proponents of reform, they tend to dismiss all concerns with some variation of, “You just don’t…