Common Core's Happy Days May Be Here Again

New studies related to the Common Core could prompt a wary public to give the standards a second look.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patte-barth/common-cores-happy-days-m_b_9276596.html

Lawrence Krauss: We Need to Teach Kids Creative Thinking | BEST OF 2015

"Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking," says the professor and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. "And therefore what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions."
Interview:
https://youtu.be/w00dJ05gxo0

Transcript - Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking, than learning how to critically think. And therefore what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers but questions. We should teach kids how to question. Now having said that of course to be a productive adult there are certain skills that are required – reading, writing and in the old fashioned days we used to say arithmetic. Now we say mathematics. And it’s important that we provide students those basic skills. And in that sense I’m in favor of a common core because I think there are certain things that most reasonable educators and most reasonable mathematicians and scientists and historians would agree are a part of what every modern literate person should have as a tool to go out and look at the outside world.

I am in favor of saying okay, let’s get teams of educators and experts in certain disciplines to say what are the basic things that we think are an essential part of an early education for people. Put them together and create as well as possible a set of goals and tools to learn those things. One thing I cannot understand and people are probably going to be upset about this is why local school boards have control over educational content. Because local school boards are inevitably made up of individuals without any training. One of the reasons we send kids to school is to help protect them from their parents – in a good sense. I mean most parents want their kids to learn good but the point is the reason kids are outside the house is so they can get exposure to things that might take them beyond the biases that they learn at home. And if we send them to school we should take them beyond the biases that are present in local school board members. There should be standards that are based – that are determined by educators, not by people who for one reason or another run for election to a local school board. So a common core is something I’m in favor of. What I’m not in favor of by the way is standardized tests however. Testing always inevitably means you teach students to be able to do tests. And I’ve seen it at all levels including by the way at graduate school. We have many grad students say from China who are excellent at taking physics tests but when they want to become researchers just being able to regurgitate information is not what makes you a creative researcher. And I think the same is true for a young person. Being able to know specifics to pass a test is not the same as being able to understand how to go about answering those questions...

Most People In New York Actually Like Common Core, According To New Survey

More than 70 percent of respondents in a survey that included 10,500 New York residents said positive things about Common Core. There was more criticism and suggestions for how to improve Common Core implementation for earlier grades than later grades, according to the survey. The majority of the respondents were teachers...
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/12/15/3732113/common-core-new-york-survey/

Obama Wants Students To Stop Taking Unnecessary Tests

Those federally-required tests make up a small share of the tests U.S. students take each year. A just-released survey by the Council of Great City Schools found that also contributing to the "burden of testing" is a laundry list of formative, benchmark, diagnostic, and practice tests required at the state and district level. According to the survey, the average student will take 112 standardized tests between preschool and high school graduation, spending as much as 25 hours a year testing.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/24/451456267/obama-wants-students-to-stop-taking-unnecessary-tests

Christians urge parents to save their kids from ‘indoctrination’ with an ‘exodus’ from public schools

Christians are urging Christian parents to take their children out of public schools because Common Core, a new curriculum intended to standardize what children learn nationwide, is “progressive” brainwashing...
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/christians-urge-parents-to-save-their-kids-from-indoctrination-with-an-exodus-from-public-schools/

Wanted: New American Teachers (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

School time is coming again for millions of American students. For some, it’s already here. In many schools there will be well-known and loved teachers ready to dive in. At others, administrators are still racing, even now, to find bodies to put at the front of the class. Teacher shortage is not a wall-to-wall national phenomenon. But there is a patchwork of teacher shortage hotspots across the country that has schools scrambling. Making late hires. Tinkering with training requirements, standards. This hour On Point: teacher shortages around the country. Where they are. Why they are./Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
https://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/08/11/teacher-supply-back-to-school-education-reform

Jeb Bush Calls Common Core ‘Poisonous,’ Forgets He Actually Supports It

Playing to the base. ... Read more

What Donald Trump Believes About Education

Trump hasn't talked much about education policy. Here's what he thinks.  ... Read more

Jindal Claims Obama’s Nonexistent Education Standards Would Recast History Through ‘Victimhood’

Bobby Jindal is worried about conceptual math and how the federal government might teach U.S. history.  ... Read more

People Like Common Core Better Once They Know What It Is

Common core support has fallen again this year, but misinformation may be partly to blame.  ... Read more

How US education policy is driven by crises, fear, and dumb questions

Education policy in American has been episodic, driven mostly by paranoia that the average American student is falling behind the rest of the world. T... Read more

5 Bobby Jindal Moments That Prove His 'Stupid Party' Bona Fides

The Louisiana governor's support of the Religious Right's attack on gay rights should give you pause.
...  Read more

Bill Maher’s Idea For New GOP Slogan: ‘Eat Sh*t And Die’

Comedian Bill Maher on his Friday show suggested a new mantra for the Republican Party, which he said captured its fondness for axing both country- of... Read more
https://youtu.be/sn_puUVJAYw

Bobby Jindal’s Lawsuit Against Common Core Law He Signed Moves Forward

 ...Jindal’s lawsuit makes the case that the Race to the Top program, which was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, coerced states into adopting Common Core standards, even though participation in grant programs is completely optional and Jindal supported implementation of standards in his own state...
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/05/29/3664139/bobby-jindal-continues-legal-crusade-common-core-law-signed/

Everything You Need To Know About Mike Huckabee In 45 Seconds

Mike Huckabee has a penchant for saying some interesting things.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/05/05/3655230/everything-need-know-mike-huckabee-45-seconds/
https://youtu.be/2R3NbRy-5qE

States Ditch Common Core Name But Keep Common Core Ideas

The name "Common Core" has become toxic, but will changing the name change opposition to it? ... Read more

Every Claim In This Ted Cruz Statement Is Completely False

"...First, Common Core is not “federally created.” It was created by the states, on a voluntary basis. As NPR reported, “the federal government played no role in creating the standards, nor did it require that states adopt them.”
Second, Common Core is not a “curriculum.”..."
... Read more

La. Superintendent Slams Jindal's 'Political' Anti-Common Core Plan

After Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) announced his plan to remove Common Core standards on Wednesday, the state superintendent criticized the plan as... Read more

In first, four N.H. school districts shake up testing with Feds' approval

The US Education Department is allowing the New Hampshire school districts to proceed with a pilot project in which locally designed measures of stude... Read more

The more people say they know about the Common Core, the less they actually do

The Common Core standards have been around for more than five years. Students in dozens of states are taking new tests to see whether they're able to ...  Read more